Mi Home, a place for Xiaomi fans to meet and chill (offline)

"A place for fans to meet each other and hang out," is how Hugo Barra describes Xiaomi's Mi Home venture.

You probably weren't aware, but Xiaomi has a total of 19 of these Mi Homes in mainland China. These are places where 'fans' of the company are supposed to meet each other, and play with new Xiaomi products.

As you would've expected, Mi Home isn't a place where you can barge in and buy yourself a phone. We're talking about Xiaomi, after all. Xiaomi is a company which believes in maintaining a supply that is at all times short of the demand -- a strategy that seems to work pretty well (at least for Xiaomi), despite the flak that they often get for that.

Coming back to Mi Home now. Xiaomi is all set to set up one of these in Hong Kong, which will mark the first Mi Home for outside of the Chinese mainland.

Purchasing a Xiaomi device can be bit of a gamble for some, because the devices are online-only and might not be to the taste of some. Which is why, the idea of Mi Homes sounds like a hit... at least for now. Xiaomi is clearly feeling at ease in its comfort zone now. But I'm sure as many of you would be, that there's many more Mi Homes to come in other Xiaomi markets in the coming months.

Picture for representational purposes.

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