Xiaomi migrates overseas user data out of the mainland

Will move info to servers in US, Singapore after privacy criticisms

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc said Thursday that it is migrating the data of its overseas users to servers located in the US and Singapore, which the company said is a move to improve the speed of its services and ensure user privacy.

The company will migrate all overseas users' e-commerce data from Beijing data centers to Amazon data centers in the US and Singapore by the end of October, Hugo Barra, vice president of Xiaomi, said in post on Google Plus.

The migration of international users' information, including Mi account, Cloud Messaging and Mi Cloud Services, will be completed by the end of 2014, Barra said.

In fast-growing markets where Amazon services are not available, such as India and Brazil, Xiaomi plans to work with local data center providers to improve its service infrastructure in 2015.

The migration "better equips us to maintain high privacy standards and comply with local data protection regulations," Barra wrote. "This is a very high priority for Xiaomi as we expand into new markets over the next few years."

Xiaomi has been criticized by Indian and Taiwan authorities since August for allegedly stealing local users' private information from their phones and transferring it to the firm's servers in the mainland.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) has accused Xiaomi of being a cyber-security threat by retrieving user information and sending the data to servers located in Beijing, and suggested that its personnel and their families not use Xiaomi devices, New York-based news portal China Topix reported Monday.

Xiaomi has sold nearly 500,000 handsets in India since it entered the market in July, Wall Street Journal reported on October 17.

Taiwan authorities also launched an investigation into Xiaomi in September, after some local users discovered that Xiaomi's cloud messaging service had uploaded their phone identification code and other information to the company's servers in Beijing without asking their consent beforehand.

Other Chinese smartphone makers have adopted more cautious methods when venturing into overseas markets.

ZTE, another mobile phone maker, said Thursday that all of its overseas users' data are stored in servers located in overseas markets.

"The company has been strictly complying with local data protection rules," Lü Qianhao, general manager of ZTE's handset strategy and marketing department, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Analysts said Xiaomi's latest move signals its efforts to further step into the international market.

"The migration will add some operational costs for Xiaomi, but it will alleviate overseas users' concerns," Yu Bin, a Nanjing-based Internet industry watcher and commentator, told the Global Times Thursday.

Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, also unveiled its global ambition.

"I discussed with Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Xiaomi's international strategy for nearly three hours on Tuesday night. Xiaomi's challenge is how to strengthen the word-of-mouth communication through Facebook," he wrote in a Weibo post Thursday.

Xiaomi's global shipment of smartphones reached 18.4 million units in the third quarter of 2014, ranking No.3 after Samsung and Apple but surpassing Huawei for the first time, data from IT consultancy iSuppli Corp showed Thursday.

But Yu said Xiaomi's growth potential in the Chinese mainland is weakening given growing competition from rivals such as Meizu and the three major wireless carriers which have all released self-branded handsets with competitive prices.

Xiaomi is not the only smartphone company to have had information-leaking problems as protecting user privacy has become a global issue for smartphone manufacturers.

Apple Inc began storing mainland users' iCloud data on servers provided by State-owned China Telecom from August 8, following -Chinese media reports that its iPhones poses a national security concern as it has a function that learns the locations of places a user visits most frequently. The move marked the first time that the US tech giant has stored user data in the Chinese mainland.

Google Inc moved its servers out of the mainland since 2010, citing censorship and privacy concerns.

"There are a massive number of iPhone and Android system users in the mainland, but their awareness of their legal rights are relatively low compared with users in some other markets," Tang Wei, a mobile security expert at Beijing Rising Information Technology Co, told the Global Times Thursday.