Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi appears to have heeded the message of Mandarin-speaking Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Days after Zuckerberg and Xiaomi CEO and founder Lei Jun talked in mainland, the fast growing device manufacturer announced the migration of its international user data to servers outside China.

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But owners of Xiaomi phone in China will continue to use local services, said Xiaomi International Vice President Hugo Barra, reports Techcrunch.

Explaining the move, Barra said by housing data of its international users, it would speed up Xiaomi servies such as its MIUI Cloud Messaging Service and other features in its MIUI rom, the company's modified version of Android. He said migration would cut network request latency request by up to 340ms in India, while Malaysian users would enjoy Mi Cloud photosync 2 to 3 times faster than current speed.

In a short period of four years, Xiaomi is now retailed in seven Asian countries from its local sales only. It is the number one seller of smartphone in China, ahead of tech giants Samsung and Apple.

But beyond upgrading its speed and providing better service, the bigger reason behind the international migration is privacy. In August, Xiaomi discovered, based on a report by security firm F-Secure, that the IMEI number of its devices, phone number of customers and other contact details as well as text messages were shared with a server in China.

Citing James Lou, the deputy director of Taiwan's National Communications Commission, Bloomberg added that as of Oct. 2 Xiaomi phones were still transmitting the information to Beijing despite introducing changes to its software. Protesters in Hong Kong have also cited the vulnerability of Xiaomi Mi units as tools of government spying.

To worsen matters, Xiaomi customers could not opt out of this arrangement and the information could be accessed by the national government.

Barra disclosed that the MIUI services would be moved to the Amazon AWS data centres in Oregon, U.S., and Singapore.

He stressed, "Our primary goal in moving to a multi-site server architecture was to improve the performance of our services for Mi fans around the world ... At the same time, it also better equips us to maintain high privacy standards and comply with local data protection regulations. This is a very high priority for Xiaomi as we expand into new markets over the next few years."

Xiaomi targets to sell 60 million units in 2014 and appears to have good chances of reaching that goal. For 2015, Lei believes Xiaomi could top 100 million units. Xiaomi phones sell briskly in and out of China because of its affordable prices. Price range starts from $154.99 for the Redmi 1S Qualcomm to $379.99 for the Mi3 2GB 64GB 5-inch model.

TagsXiaomi user data