Vivo, Oppo plan to move cloud to India, pack off Chinese expats after Doklam crisis

Chinese smartphone giants Oppo ad Vivo have planned to move their cloud service locations to India, according to a report in The Economic Times.

A senior executive, who wished not to be  named, told the newspaper, "Oppo and Vivo have their cloud outside India, which is usually outsourced to enterprise cloud service and data server providers like Amazon. They are now asking them to change the location of these clouds to Indian territory.”

Currently, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are the two leading cloud and server providers in India.

According to another report in the newspaper, more than 400 Chinese expats working for Oppo and Vivo have been sent back after a sharp fall in the July and August smartphone sales.

The fall in sales has been linked to the rising anti-Beijing sentiment in some of India’s large consumer markets.

Vivek Zhang, the Chinese expat who signed the title sponsorship deal of the Indian Premier League (IPL) for Vivo as its chief marketing officer, had also returned home earlier this month.

The decline in sales has prompted the parent company to reshuffle the local management and bring in new faces who would help counter the anti-China Sentiment in certain consumer markets since the Doklam standoff ensued in mid-June.

Buyer resistance in some parts of northern India has prompted the parent company to restrict front-office roles for Chinese expats in the distribution establishments there.