SHENZHEN, March 31 -- China's leading telecommunications company, Huawei Technologies, reported on Tuesday that its profits leapt 32.7 percent last year.

The privately-owned company said in its annual report that its net profit rose to 27.9 billion yuan (about 4.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014 and its revenue grew to 288.2 billion yuan, up 20.6 percent year on year.

The growth partly thanks to Huawei's development of consumer business, mainly smartphone sales. Consumer business revenue hit 75.1 billion yuan last year, up 32.6 percent.

It spent 40.8 billion yuan on research and development (R&D) in 2014, 29.4 percent more than in 2013, according to Ken Hu, deputy chairman and rotating CEO.

Huawei has invested more than 190 billion yuan in R&D over the past decade, he said.