ChinaVirtuoso

Hugo Barra, global vice president of Xiaomi, recently issued a statement that claims Xiaomi is moving its international user data from servers in Beijing to U.S. and Singapore.

This is reportedly a response to previous incidents which exposed that Xiaomi smartphones automatically returned global user data to Beijing servers. Chinese telecommunications regulations require Chinese companies to store domestic data on local Chinese servers.

Is this move by Barra enough to quell security and privacy concerns that a Chinese mobile phone company may be in cahoots with the Chinese government for harvesting global user data?

According to Barra the international user data migration aims to improve experience of users all over the world, cut down latency and reduce failure rates. At the same time, it will help the company maintain high privacy standards and comply with local data protection regulations.

Based on Xiaomi's plans, the company will first migrate their global e-commerce platforms and user data for all international users from Beijing data centers to Amazon AWS data centers in California, U.S. and Singapore, which is expected to be completed at the end of October 2014. It will benefit users in all international markets, including Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan.

For the second step, Xiaomi will migrate their MIUI services and corresponding data for all international users from Beijing data centers to Amazon AWS data centers in Oregon, U.S. and Singapore, realizing the migration of Mi account, cloud messaging and Mi cloud services. The migration is expected to be completed at the end of 2014.

Finally, Xiaomi plans to improve user experience in emerging markets such as India and Brazil in 2015. Due to the lack of Amazon AWS services in those markets, Xiaomi will cooperate with local data center providers.


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