Xiaomi Inc. said Thursday that the migration of users' data to servers globally is to reduce delays and failures of its services to international users, as well as security considerations, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Xiaomi's engineering teams started migrating global e-commerce platforms and user data from Beijing data centers to Amazon AWS data centers in California and Singapore and will likely finish by the end of the month.
While tech companies typically keep servers physically close by to efficiently provide speed in service as its location is greatly affected by political concerns. Google Inc., for instance, has opted to store local users' data offshore of mainland China over security concerns.
Users in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan will experience website speed boosts as much as 200 percent, Xiaomi's global vice president Hugo Barra wrote on his Google Plus page.
In 2015, Xiaomi is planning on working with local data center providers in India and Brazil, where Amazon AWS services aren't yet available, to set up their service infrastructure.
Earlier this year, Apple Inc. decided to move Chinese users' data to China Telecom Corp., according to Bloomberg.
The move contrasts Apple Inc's decision, reports Reuters.
China has been recently bombarded with accusations of cyber-warfare, which heighten questions from security firms to take a harder look at China, as Apple's iCloud service came under attack in the mainland, the Wall Street Journal has learned.
The migration comes amid recent several privacy concerns as allegations of Xiaomi's phones are eqquipped with malware. International security research facility from Finland, F-Secure, tested a phone from Xiaomi in August and found out that the device sent unencrypted data - including user's phone number, contact list and text messages - to Beijing.
Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission was investigating a complaint from Xiaomi's customer regarding receiving unsolicited telemarketing calls from abroad.
Barra assures its users that security and performance is Xiaomi's priorities.
