The latest data from Synergy Research Group shows that in the first quarter of 2024, global enterprises spent far more than $76 billion on cloud infrastructure services, an increase of $13.5 billion, or 21%, compared to the first quarter of 2023. This is the second consecutive quarter in which the year-on-year growth rate of the market has significantly improved, and the first quarter of 2024 is the strongest quarter of growth since the third quarter of 2022. Although the degree has decreased, there are still some economic, monetary, and political obstacles. However, the potential power of the market not only compensates for these limitations, but also largely benefits from the impact of generative artificial intelligence technology and services.
In terms of competitive landscape, Amazon maintains a strong leading position in the market, despite stronger year-on-year growth data from Microsoft and Google. These three companies have seen a significant increase in growth rates in the past two quarters. Their global market share in the first quarter of 2024 was 31%, 25%, and 11%, respectively. Among Tier 2 cloud providers, Huawei, Snowflake, MongoDB, and Oracle have the highest year-on-year growth rates.
Currently, most major cloud providers have released their revenue data for the first quarter. Synergy estimates that the revenue from cloud infrastructure services (including IaaS, PaaS, and hosted private cloud services) for the quarter was $76.5 billion, with revenue over the past 12 months reaching $283 billion. Public IaaS and PaaS services accounted for the majority of the market, with a growth rate of 23% in the first quarter. The dominant position of major cloud providers is more evident in the public cloud sector, with the top three accounting for 72% of the market share. From a geographical perspective, the cloud market continues to grow strongly in all regions of the world. In terms of local currency, the Asia Pacific region has the strongest growth, with growth rates of 25% or higher in India, Japan, Australia, and South Korea. The United States remains the largest cloud market to date, with a scale larger than the entire Asia Pacific region. The US market grew by 20% in the first quarter.
Synergy reports that the growth rate of the cloud market was unusually low at the end of 2022 and for most of 2023 due to external factors. John Dinsdale, Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group, said, “We expect the growth rate to rebound, which is exactly what we are seeing now. In terms of annualized operating rates, we now have a market of $300 billion, growing at a rate of 21% annually. We will not return to the growth rate before 2022 because the market has become too large to grow rapidly, but we will see the market continue to expand significantly. We predict that this number will double in the next four years.”