Amazon puts Microsoft away in the Battle of Seattle

With Amazon raising its revenue forecast for the current quarter, the online retailing giant is leaving fellow Seattle-area tech giant Microsoft in the dust in terms of annual sales.

It's also closing in on a certain Cupertino, Calif.-based seller of smartphones, the heavyweight in tech sales.

Amazon's (AMZN) bullish prediction makes Wall Street's full-year estimates more of a lock, and that view is a sweet one for growth investors. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to boost the company's top line 21.5% this year and another 20% in 2017.

For Microsoft (MSFT), however, the contrast is stark and a good illustration of how growth in the sector has moved from hardware, software and chip companies to Internet firms selling goods or advertising online.

The maker of Office and Word is expected to post a 2% decline in revenue this fiscal year, which ends in June. In fiscal 2017, it's seen growing just 4% off that lower base.

The upshot?

By next year Amazon is seen generating $156 billion in sales, or nearly two-thirds more than Microsoft's $95.4 billion.

So while Bill Gates helped put Seattle area on the map as a U.S. tech hub, Bezos now runs the largest tech company in the State of Washington, by far, in terms of sales.

What's more, Amazon is also putting more distance between itself and two other fast-growing Internet companies, Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet.

While Facebook posted the fastest first-quarter growth, at 52%, and Google sales rose 17%  — a hefty number for its size — it was Amazon that added the most new business in the tech sector.

With revenue surging, Amazon won $6.4 billion in new business during the period, versus a year ago. Alphabet (GOOGL), meanwhile, added $3 billion in new sales and Facebook, $1.84 billion.

That means that while Google and Facebook (FB)  were valued by stock investors more than Amazon, there's only one tech firm still larger than Amazon by revenue.

That would be Apple (AAPL), which in spite of its recent iPhone slowdown, is still expected to post revenue of more than $200 billion for this year and next.

John Shinal has covered tech and financial markets for more than 15 years at Bloomberg, BusinessWeek,The San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal Digital Network and others. Follow him on Twitter: @johnshinal.