Whenever they release a new gadget, they make the announcement and then make you to wait. Their online shop has this queuing system which is super hard to get in whenever they make a new release. And it usually get "sold out" in a matter of minutes or even seconds. The majority of the consumers won't get hand on it months after its initial release. And interestingly, when this happens, usually the component price has dropped quite a lot where the price/cost ration is far less impressive. However, they still get to keep the reputation that they sell "quality" stuff at an insanely low price.
The whole process sounds like a shady business to me, but apparently they grow super fast with this kind of strategy. So yeah, I guess what do I know.
Last year I wanted a xiaomi box (a bit like apple tv but optimized for China)
They only release x amount of units on a certain day at a certain time on a monthly basis. These will be sold out in seconds. I'm pretty sure most of these items are bought by scalper bots then resold on taobao.com etc. I never successfully managed to order and eventually bought on the secondary market for a small markup
This is great for xiaomi. They create hype and each of their sales are a sellout. The next month they come out with a slightly improved version of their product based on user feedback
As their founder said Electronics are like seafood you don't want it hang around a warehouse too long
to sum up
your chances of getting on of these from xiaomi.com are really really low
The whole process sounds like a shady business to me, but apparently they grow super fast with this kind of strategy. So yeah, I guess what do I know.