Apple Inc may have started to pay patent royalties to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Tuesday.

Huawei licensed 769 patents to Apple in 2015, including those relating to the GSM, UMTS and LTE wireless communication technologies, while the US company only gave Huawei licenses to 98 patents in return, the report said, citing data from the Guangdong Intellectual Property Office.

Huawei declined to reveal financial details of the patent deals when contacted by the Beijing Youth Daily.

Huawei has reached similar patent deals with other IT giants. For instance, it agreed in January with Sweden's Ericsson AB to extend a global patent deal that allows the companies to access each other's essential patents and technologies globally.

As of the end of 2015, Huawei had filed 52,550 patent applications in China and 30,613 applications abroad. A total of 50,377 patents had been granted by that time, the report said.

In 2015, the company invested 59.6 billion yuan ($9.15 billion) in research and development, up 46.1 percent year-on-year, according to its annual report released on April 1.

Chinese technology companies have attached increasing importance to patents. In 2015, Huawei filed 3,216 patent applications, ranking No.3 among all Chinese technology companies.

Rival ZTE Corp topped the list with 3,516 patent applications, while handset maker Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp ranked second with 3,338 filed, according to data from the State Intellectual Property Office in April.

Global Times