The "bird-watching" activity that Li Xian also participates in has a market worth hundreds of billions globally | Product Observation
Author | Zhang Ziyi
Editor | Peng Xiaoqiu
This spring, the celebrity Li Xian popularized a niche market.
The bird-watching vlog he shared was publicly commended by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Subsequently, the hot searches for several consecutive days were all related to "bird-watching" and "bird photography".
While "bird-watching" is breaking into the mainstream in China, in the United States, it is a huge market with a scale of over a hundred billion US dollars.
The report "State of the Birds" shows that in 2025, there were nearly 100 million bird-watching enthusiasts in the United States, accounting for more than one-third of the adult population in the United States. The total annual expenditure of these enthusiasts on bird-watching trips, equipment, clothing, photography equipment, etc., has reached as high as 108 billion US dollars.
The United States is one of the most profitable markets for bird products in the world. Americans are particularly obsessed with wild birds, and bird-watching is the second most popular outdoor hobby among Americans. For the wild bird market, feeding and watching are the most important scenarios and demands.
Many brand merchants have smelled business opportunities. Among them, there are two smart bird feeder brands that Yingke has paid the most attention to.
One is an American company, Bird Buddy. Its smart bird feeder has become a "phenomenal" product in the smart home field on Amazon, with a single product monthly sales of over 5 million US dollars.
The other is a Chinese cross-border e-commerce company, Netvue. It launched its sub-brand Birdfy in 2020. The price of its smart bird feeder is not much different from that of Bird Buddy's products, and it has also reached the top of Amazon's BSR, with monthly sales of one million US dollars.
In comparison, traditional bird feeders are inexpensive, with many players and fierce competition.
The new players represented by Bird Buddy and Birdfy can capture the niche industry trend with their keen product insights. Of course, achieving high performance is the first step in meeting the demand. The subsequent product design and local operation are greater challenges.
01 A New Product Category Inspired by GoPro
When you open the official website of Bird Buddy, it's hard not to be attracted by the various lively little birds. The ultra-high-definition image quality highly restores the colorful feathers of different birds. The birds eating presented in the form of animated pictures allow consumers to experience the feeling of using the smart feeder from the first-person perspective.
Bird Buddy's first-generation smart feeder was launched on Kickstarter in 2020, which was also the world's first smart feeder. The crowdfunding amount reached 4.19 million euros, and there were more than 20,000 supporters, which is quite an amazing achievement. Currently, the smart feeder Pro series it launched is priced from 199 US dollars to 329 US dollars (including discounts).
Interestingly, Ziga Vrtacic, the co-founder of Bird Buddy, once talked about the inspiration for designing the smart feeder. It came from a YouTube video of seagulls stealing a GoPro camera. There were many close-up shots of birds looking at the camera in the video, which made him realize that there could be a new angle for bird-watching.
GoPro may not have expected that it inspired Insta360 to develop a panoramic action camera and also inspired Bird Buddy to develop a feeder. Although its performance has been declining, the pioneering significance of its products always exists.
Back to the Bird Buddy product itself, its built-in AI algorithm can identify more than 1,000 species of birds. It is equipped with a 5-megapixel camera and an infrared night vision function, so it can capture the arrival of birds even at night. When a bird approaches, the device automatically takes high-definition photos or videos, which are pushed to the mobile APP in real-time via Wi-Fi, and matched with the cloud database to instantly present information such as the bird's name and habits.
The new-generation Pro version is equipped with an upgraded HDR camera. The sensor size is smaller, the focusing range and field of view are wider. It supports 2K HDR video shooting in slow motion and is equipped with a high-fidelity microphone. Its modular design supports function iteration, and the solar panel accessory can achieve energy self-sufficiency.
In terms of APP design, Bird Buddy has also simplified the operation interface design. Users only need to install the device, connect to the APP, and wait for the birds.
The foreign media "Wired" magazine's evaluation found that the APP will send a summary at the end of each day, including the number of visits and the number of different bird species. The home page contains a list of "postcards" taken by the camera. Each postcard contains multiple high-definition photos and an audio video. The video duration ranges from a few seconds to two minutes, depending on the birds' activities. There are also functions such as saving favorite photos, viewing selected clips from other users, and reminding self-cleaning.
In response to users' complaints on social platforms that the feeder attracts other creatures such as cats and raccoons, which causes damage, Bird Buddy has also launched a function on the APP to prompt the presence of unknown creatures.
Of course, Bird Buddy also has some problems with inaccurate bird identification and missed identification of birds. But the bigger problem is the production capacity. Many users on social media have reported long delivery times and slow responses from customer service emails.
02 Down-to-Earth Chinese Power
The rise of Birdfy in the smart feeder field is due to the keen business sense of the Chinese cross-border e-commerce company and its good use of its technological advantages.
Netvue, the parent company of Birdfy, has been deeply involved in the fields of smart video doorbells, smart monitoring, indoor and outdoor cameras for many years. It is an established smart home enterprise with rich experience in going global.
An overseas entrepreneur familiar with the security industry told Yingke: "Netvue's original security product business has declined a lot. It was revitalized by the smart bird feeder products. In recent years, its profit has exceeded 100 million, and it is doing well."
According to Brand Ark, Netvue noticed that many outdoor camera users would actively share the scenes of birds visiting unexpectedly captured by the products on the brand's social media and application community. Therefore, Netvue once considered manufacturing bird-watching cameras. Smart bird-watching has always been a blank market overseas. Due to the high alertness of birds, for a long time, bird-watching enthusiasts usually had to rely on telephoto lenses or telescopes to take pictures or observe from a long distance, which was expensive and the experience was not satisfactory. So the idea of combining a smart camera with a bird feeder was born.
Birdfy launched its smart feeder in 2021 and conducted crowdfunding on Kickstarter and IGG, officially entering the field of smart bird-watching.
The price of Birdfy's products ranges from 279.99 US dollars to 119.99 US dollars (including discounts). Based on the basic configuration, Birdfy is equipped with a high-definition wide-angle camera, supporting 1080P real-time video recording and photo-taking, which can clearly capture the details of birds. It is also equipped with a self-developed AI recognition system, which can identify more than 1,000 species of birds and automatically label and classify them.
In terms of detailed functions, Birdfy supports adjustable feeding volume, precisely controlling the feed consumption; the infrared night vision function ensures that users can still clearly record bird activities under low-light conditions; in addition, the disassembly, cleaning and installation process of the Birdfy device is simple, which reduces the maintenance cost and also lowers the threshold for users to use and maintain.
After evaluation, the foreign media "Wired" magazine believes that Birdfy's camera has a wide field of view and can capture all the scenes around the feeder, but the picture quality is not satisfactory, and the photos will have a grainy feeling. Under certain conditions, such as in the early morning or late at night when the light is weak, the video quality may decline, with some color differences and compression. The video quality looks good on small-screen devices but may not be so good on large screens. Its visual output effect is more suitable for ordinary bird-watching enthusiasts. In addition, Birdfy's camera can also be used as an additional security measure and can issue an alarm.
Birdfy also has the problem of inaccurate bird identification by AI. This may be a common industry problem with current smart feeders.
To some extent, Birdfy's smart feeder also perfectly demonstrates the response speed of the Chinese supply chain. It launches new products very quickly. Compared with Bird Buddy's slow delivery cycle, Birdfy does not have this problem.
Of course, the image quality of Birdfy is also a problem that needs to be improved urgently.
Yingke learned that the success of Bird Buddy and Birdfy has made many domestic enterprises producing security products launch similar products. Due to the lack of overseas living experience, many products are produced using common molds and lack local operation, resulting in poor sales.
For bird-watching enthusiasts, the main need for using a smart feeder is to watch birds. The SaaS subscription service attached to the hardware products is also an important source of profit for smart bird feeder enterprises. Being able to do a good job in software services tests both the enterprise's software capabilities and its local capabilities.
The bird feeder market is still in the stage of transitioning from traditional feeders to intelligent ones. There are many opportunities, but the barriers are limited.
Source of the cover image | Enterprise official website
Typesetting | Liu Siya
This article is from the WeChat public account "Yingke". The author is Zhang Ziyi, and it is published with permission.
