Apple Inc to set up first data centre in China

Apple Inc said today that it was setting up its first data centre in China, in partnership with a local internet services company, to comply with tougher cyber-security laws introduced last month.

According to Apple, the centre, will be built in the southern province of Guizhou partnering with data management firm Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd (GCBD).

An Apple spokesman in Shanghai told Reuters the centre was part of a planned $1-billion investment into the province.

"The addition of this data centre will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services while also complying with newly passed regulations," Apple said in a statement to Reuters.

"These regulations require cloud services be operated by Chinese companies so we're partnering with GCBD to offer iCloud," it said, referring to its online data storage service.

According to commentators, Apple was the first foreign firm to announce amendments to its data storage for China after the new cyber-security law came into effect on 1 June. The law requires foreign firms to store data within China.

Overseas business groups said the law's strict data surveillance and storage requirements were rather vague and firms were being asked to take on excessive compliance risks. It also posed a threat to proprietary data.

With the data centre, Apple aimed to migrate Chinese users' information, now stored elsewhere, to the new facility in coming months, according to its messaged statement.

''The addition of this data center will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services while also complying with newly passed regulations,'' the company said in its statement. ''Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.''

Apple's ISP partner was co-founded by the government of Guizhou, which had started promoting the mountainous central province as the country's data centre capital.