China's leading telecommunications company, Huawei Technologies, reported Friday that its profits leapt 33 percent last year, driven by smartphone sales.

The company said in its annual report that net profits rose to 36.9 billion yuan (6.13 billion US dollars) in 2015 and global revenue grew to 395 billion yuan, up 37 percent year on year.

The growth was fueled by a striking expansion of consumer business, which hit 129 billion yuan last year, up 73 percent.

The success was down to the brand's increasing reputation, said Huawei CEO Guo Ping. The company's terminal products, including smartphones, are sold in 170 countries and regions.

In addition, thanks to wider global use of fourth-generation mobile services, sales of Huawei's network gear increased 21 percent to 232 billion yuan.

The company's revenue in overseas markets accounted for 58 percent of the total, said CFO Meng Wanzhou.

Huawei's annual report is more striking for investment in R&D than record-breaking profits. Huawei spent 59.6 billion yuan on R&D in 2015 and has invested more than 240 billion yuan in R&D over the past ten years.

The 59.6 billion yuan Huawei spent on R&D in 2015 accounted for 15.1 percent of the company's total income and the 79,000 technical staff comprise 45 percent of total employees.

Huawei is investing 1 billion dollars in a technology research platform open to the global market, and the company has joined 300 standards organizations, industry alliances and open source communities, becoming an international standard maker, according to Guo.

"A group of leading international companies have emerged in Guangdong Province, and one thing they have in common is that they all own their own core technology," said Li Xinchun of Sun Yat-Sen University, management school. In 2015, R&D in Guangdong took up 2.5 percent of GDP. The province is encouraging its thousands of companies to increase direct investment overseas and expand transnational businesses.

The province is planning to expand the number of companies in the Pearl River Delta whose main business income is over 10 billion yuan to 255, and those with main business income more than 100 billion yuan to about 30, more than double the current number.

"What can be expected is that as the innovation drive deepens, more transnational companies will emerge in Guangdong and in the country at large. They will play a vital part in the global market and become leaders in their fields," Li said.