Amazon's cloud division returns to growth in Q3 after price cuts

San Francisco

AMAZON.COM Inc's cloud division returned to growth after a hiccup earlier this year, as price cuts attracted new customers and spurred existing clients to spend more.

The online retailer reported third-quarter sales of US$1.34 billion for a division it calls "North America, Other" on Wednesday, up from US$960 million a year ago and US$1.17 billion in the prior quarter. That's the category that contains Amazon Web Services, or AWS, a strategically important cloud business that rents computing hardware and software products via the Internet to customers worldwide.