IPhone maker Apple Inc. is planning to hand over control of its iCloud services in China to a local company in order to comply with a new cybersecurity law enacted in the country last year.

Chinese media Friday quoted Apple in a report saying that Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Development, a company owned by the Guizho provincial government, will take over iCloud operations in the country starting Feb. 28. iCloud is Apple’s main cloud-based data storage service, used by iPhone owners to back up data such as photos, videos and documents stored on their devices.

Apple said it has already begun notifying Chinese users of the service migration, which will not affect accounts registered outside of mainland China.

Apple’s move is designed to comply with a new cybersecurity law enacted in June, which insists that data held on Chinese citizens must be stored within China and operated by a local company. The law is similar to existing laws in Europe and Russia, both of which insist data on their citizens must also be held in country, although neither of those require a local firm to operate services.

Apple was one of the fastest companies to comply with China’s new law. The company signed a memorandum of understanding with Guizhou’s provincial government back in July 2017, which also detailed plans to build a new, $1 billion data center in the Southeastern Chinese province.

Although Apple is making the move to comply with China’s new law, the migration should also provide benefits for local customers, the report said. By storing data locally, the speed and reliability of Apple’s iCloud service should improve, the company said.

Other U.S. tech firms are set to follow Apple’s example in coming months. The Chinese report said Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. have all entered into similar agreements with local firms to maintain their data operations in China.

Image: Warren R.M. Stuart