Xiaomi Promises Indian Data Centres in 2015; Redmi 1S Flash Sale on 28 October Despite Security Concerns

Seeking to ward off concerns about privacy that could hamper its efforts to tap the Indian market, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc on Monday revealed its plans to set up a data centre in India next year to store local user data.

Meanwhile, despite security concerns plaguing Redmi 1S in India, the Chinese company is going ahead with its Flipkart flash sale as planned, on Tuesday.

Xiaomi has confirmed (via Facebook) that the 28 October flash sale will kick-off at the usual time, i.e., 2pm afternoon. However, the company has not revealed the details regarding the number of units that will be up for grabs this Tuesday.

Flipkart has also put up an advisory on its webpage announcing that consumers won't be getting the complimentary screen guard and micro-SIM card adaptor in this flash sale.

Though the news might dishearten Xiaomi fans, the company is unlikely to get perturbed by this, since their immediate concern is to mitigate the damage caused by negative publicity in India. The company is facing a lot of heat from media ever since the Indian Air Force (IAF) issued security warning with 'medium' severe rating on Redmi 1S.

Xiaomi has been accused of transferring user's carrier name, phone number, IMEI number, numbers from the address book and text messages to a server in China, owned by CNNIC. It is an administrative agency linked to Internet affairs, which falls under the Ministry of Information Industry of People's Republic of China.

Xiaomi global head Hugo Barra (via Facebook) immediately released a statement briefing the company's stand on privacy of its esteemed consumers.

To show company's commitment towards the Indian buyer, Xiaomi has decided to shift all of the country's user details from China to the subcontinent by setting up local data centres by 2015.

As a temporary arrangement, the company has began migrating all the details -- services and corresponding data -- of Indian users from Beijing data centres to Amazon AWS data centres in Singapore and USA.

Parts of this migration will be completed by the end of October, and all of it will be completed by the end of 2014, said Barra.

Barra has also clarified that the loopholes found in Cloud Messaging Service (which enables users to send text messages for free, similar to other popular messaging services), during a test conducted by F-Secure, has been addressed and acknowledged by the computer security company.

With regard IAF circular, the company has decided to approach the Indian government to address all the concerns.

Now back to Xiaomi's 28 October flash sale, the registration window will be open to public till 23:59 pm today (27 October) on Flipkart. Even those registered users who missed out on buying the Xiaomi phone on 21 October must have to re-apply.

Key specifications of Xiaomi Redmi 1S: