“I've had some further feedback from the guys in our development team. I can confirm that Xperia phones don't store any user data for transmission to Baidu. The MyXperia app supports both Google Cloud Messaging service and the Baidu Push Notification framework, as do many third party apps, to make sure we can support our China customers as well as those in the rest of the world. Both get automatically initialised when you first activate MyXperia. The IP activity you are seeing is just linked to Baidu's push notification system, which is an expected behaviour for this application.”
Future updates of MyXperia will be optimised so the Baidu Push Notification framework is only initialized in Mainland China variants of Xperia devices. But as these services are common standards in the industry, other 3rd party applications may also include Baidu Push Notifications or other Baidu services, resulting in the Baidu folder being shared between such applications. Sony Mobile fully reassures all its customers that MyXperia uses a push notification system and does not store any user data for transmission to Baidu.”
“We built the app using both protocols to ensure both our Chinese and global users could enjoy MyXperia. However, we've designed later versions to package the service relevant to a specific region only – these updates are right around the corner, rolling out soon .”
