SHENZHEN, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese telecom giant Huawei reported robust revenue and profit growth in 2018 "despite a challenging environment," the company announced Friday.

The company raked in 721.2 billion yuan (about 105.2 billion U.S. dollars) in global sales revenue, up 19.5 percent year-on-year, while its net profit increased 25.1 percent to reached 59.3 billion yuan, according to Huawei's 2018 Annual Report.

Huawei continued to invest heavily in research and development (R&D) in 2018, spending 101.5 billion yuan, or 14.1 percent of its sales revenue, in this field.

Over the last ten years, Huawei's R&D expenditure has exceeded 480 billion yuan, the report showed.