Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google Cloud continued to dominate the global cloud market during the first quarter of the year, with that triumphant snaring three-quarters of the $76 billion enterprises spent on cloud infrastructure services during Q1.

Synergy Research Group (SRG) reported that AWS continued to be the biggest revenue hog, sucking up 31% of the market revenues for Q1. That share remained steady sequentially, but was down slightly from the 32% share AWS garnered for the first quarter of 2023. Don’t feel bad for AWS as overall cloud spending increased a substantial 21% from Q1 of last year.

Microsoft might have the most to celebrate as it managed to grow market share during the latest quarter. SRG found that the cloud giant's Azure platform controlled 25% of the market during Q1, which continued what has been a steady market share progression for Microsoft from 23% during the same period last year and 24% at the end of 2023.

Google Cloud maintained the 11% market share it had at the end of last year, but did add a percentage point compared to where it sat at the end of Q1 2023.

“Amazon maintains a strong lead in the market though Microsoft and Google had the stronger year-on-year growth numbers,” SRG noted in its report. “All three saw their growth rates increase substantially in the last two quarters.”

Recent moves by the three hyperscalers to waive data egress fees highlight the market’s ongoing competitive battle. AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud have also been investing significantly to expand capacity, with recent SRG data showing AWS, Microsoft and Google combined accounting for 60% of global hyperscale data center capacity.

SRG’s cloud infrastructure service revenue data includes infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and hosted private cloud services. It noted that the first two accounted for “a bulk of the market” and that they “grew by 23% in Q1.”

The U.S. remains “by far” the world’s largest cloud market, growing 20% during Q1. That size surpassed the entire Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, which did manage to post the highest growth rate (25%) in Q1.

The overall market itself also hit $283 billion in spending over the past 12 months, with SRG predicting continued strong growth. This is based on underlying market strengths aided “in no small part by the impact of generative [artificial intelligence] technology and services” pushing back against lessening “economic, currency and political headwinds.”

“Synergy reported that in late 2022 and through much of 2023 cloud market growth rates were abnormally low, held back by external factors. We forecast that growth rates would bounce back and that is what we are now seeing,” John Dinsdale, chief analyst at SRG, wrote. “In terms of annualized run rate we now have a $300 billion market, which is growing at 21% per year. We will not return to the growth rates seen prior to 2022, as the market has become too massive to grow that rapidly, but we will see the market continue to expand substantially. We are forecasting that it will double in size over the next four years.”