Online retail giant Amazon. com's quarterly revenue surged 28.2 per cent as its Prime loyalty programe helped attract more customers and revenue jumped in its cloud services business.

The reults beat analysts’ expectations by a wide margin asn the firm attracted more customers while revenue surged in its cloud services business.

Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon reported net income of $513 million, for the quarter ended March 31st. The company had a loss of $57 million a year earlier. Net sales surged 28.2 percent to $29.13 billion. Analysts on average had expected revenue of $27.98 billion.

Shares were up over 11 per cent in post market trading.

Amazon has seen strong growth in subscribers to its Prime loyalty program, which offers one-hour delivery, original TV programming and access to its digital entertainment products such as Prime Music and Prime Video for an annual fee of $99. The company recently launched a monthly subscription to the program for $10.99. Amazon has also said it plans to offer its video streaming service for a monthly fee of $8.99.

Another area of growth is web services, where the firm’s cloud services division recorded net sales of $2.6 billion. The unit, Amazon’s fastest growing business, is seen as the next driver of growth for the company.

While sales of Amazon's devices have been overshadowed by rivals like Apple, the firm said consumers bought twice as many of its Fire Tablets inthe first quarter than a year ago.

- (Reuters)