China’s software firms are seeing strong earnings and pouring that straight into R&D, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and reported by Yicai Global.

Upon releasing a 2019 list of China’s top 100 software company by sales revenue, the ministry said the enterprises on the list reported 821.2 billion yuan (US$118.5 billion) of revenue from software business in 2018, 6.5% up from that of the top 100 companies a year ago, the report said.