And the biggest just got bigger: Amazon reported late Thursday that its full-year sales for 2017 skyrocketed 31% to $177.9 billion. The year’s final tally came on the back of a fourth quarter in which the Seattle-based ecommerce colossus increased revenue to $60.5 billion, a 38% jump over the same quarter the prior year.

For the year, Amazon registered net income of $3 billion, or $6.15 per diluted share, compared with net income of $2.4 billion, or $4.90 per diluted share in 2016. Operating income, however, decreased a slight 2% to $4.1 billion, down from $4.2 billion in 2016. Even so, for the fourth quarter, operating income soared 69% year-over-year to $2.1 billion, while net income more than doubled to $1.9 billion, or $3.75 per diluted share. Amazon noted that the fourth quarter of 2017 includes a provisional tax benefit for the impact of the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 of approximately $789 million.

On the whole, 2017 was, as the numbers clearly indicated, a stellar year, said Amazon Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos, who was especially buoyant about his company’s Alexa offering.

“Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far exceeded them. We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very often — expect us to double down,” said Bezos. “We’ve reached an important point where other companies and developers are accelerating adoption of Alexa. There are now over 30,000 skills from outside developers, customers can control more than 4,000 smart home devices from 1,200 unique brands with Alexa, and we’re seeing strong response to our new far-field voice kit for manufacturers.” 

Amid a litany of 2017 highlights detailed in an earnings release, Amazon stated that it shipped more than 5 billion items worldwide through its Prime service. Perhaps notable for companies in the B2B segment, Fulfillment by Amazon shipped billions of products for small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Late last year, Counselor filed an in-depth report on Amazon and its potential impact on the promotional products industry. Read it here. 

Going forward, Amazon expects to build on its success. The company is predicting first quarter 2018 nets sales to grow between 34% and 42%, rising to $47.75 billion and $50.75 billion. ​