Citing anonymous sources, Digitimes reports that Apple has contracted a China-based server vendor as its supplier in an effort to move its iCloud service in-house.
Currently, Apple is relying heavily on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its data-centre needs, but the move could help the company cut costs and satisfy increased demand at the same time.
The rumoured new Apple supplier is Inspur, which currently controls 60% of China’s Internet service market. To put that into context, Chinese Internet giant Baidu has more than 85% of its servers with Inspur, and Alibaba, 60%.
Since Inspur is supported by the China government, many IT players including Microsoft, LG Electronics, Ericsson, Intel, IBM, SAP, VMware, Nvidia and RedHat, have formed partnerships with the China-based server vendor, looking to quickly expand in China’s server market.
In an effort to reduce its reliance on AWS, Apple has recently signed a deal with Google for the latter add cloud infrastructure to iCloud and other cloud-based Apple services. Meanwhile, Apple is busy building data centres in different parts of the world over the next two years, including a $2 billion “global command centre” located at the failed sapphire production plant in Mesa, Arizona.
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