"We're moving your data!", Hugo Barra says. The Xiaomi VP of International wrote a lengthy Facebook post, in which he informs users of Xiaomi handsets that the company's cloud storage platform for international clients is moving out of Beijing and on to Amazon's AWS data centers in the US (California) and Singapore.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud-computing platform, which was launched in 2006, and allows companies to rent a large amount of servers quicker and easier than having to build their own.
Xiaomi claims that the switch aims to provide better connectivity and syncing speeds to the company's e-commerce and cloud platforms for Mi users outside of China. According to Mr. Barra, users in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are already experiencing a 30% boost in speeds and ones in India – as much as 200%.
Of course, one can't help but wonder whether this move of cloud servers has anything to do with recent allegations that Xiaomi-made devices tend to
upload personal data to the Chinese government's servers. The Mi has denied such accusations time and again, saying that the info flow that has been detected by users is nothing but a cloud sync, yet it's pretty hard to clean up such a spot from one's reputation in today's post-Snowden world of communications.
So, seeing as Xiaomi has been working on slowly pushing out of the Asian markets, it seems that it also wanted to put all rumors about spying to rest and, of course, provide a faster cloud service for future western customers.
