How Technology Disrupts Smoking

Getty images & PMI

From 1954 to 1999 five cowboys modeled as Marlboro men in the Marlboro advertising campaign. Three of them died because of lung cancer, the fourth because of prostate cancer and the last one the most famous and the one that outlived all his predecessors reached 85 and cancer-less. Since then the anti-smoking campaign has tightened up legal restrictions and fines and it has produced encouraging results.

According to the National Health Interview Survey, cigarette smoking among the American adults (aged ≥18 years) declined from 20.9% in 2005 to 15.5% in 2016. Yet, nearly 38 million American adults smoked cigarettes (‘every day’ or ‘some days’) in 2016. The same picture is described by the World Health Organization, which predicts a global decrease in tobacco smoking. The WHO report reveals that in 2015 there were 29 million fewer smokers compared with 2000. Still, some 1.1 billion people – 20% of the population over the age of 15- are active smokers.

Tommaso Di Giovanni, Director Global Communications, Philip Morris International has a similar point of view, as 'the World Health Organization acknowledges that this number is not going to decrease in the next decade, despite campaigns to encourage smokers to quit and increasing regulatory restrictions.'

That's why PMI invested hard in R&D, so as to offer smokers the possibility to consume nicotine using products that are less harmful than continued smoking. This is the general framework where the IQOS version 3 came to light which belongs to heated tobacco devices and the manufacturers imply that new updated versions are following just as high tech products update, too. So it makes perfect sense when Tommaso Di Giovanni estimates that 'in 2018, the PMI had already 6.6 million users' and not smokers.


At the heart of IQOS, there are sophisticated electronics that heat specially designed tobacco units. According to PMI, IQOS heats the tobacco just enough to release a flavorful nicotine-containing tobacco vapor but without burning the tobacco. While the tobacco in a cigarette reaches temperatures exceeding 600°C, generating smoke together with high levels of harmful chemicals, IQOS heats tobacco at much lower temperatures, up to 350°C, without combustion, fire, ash, or smoke. For this reason, the levels of harmful chemicals are significantly reduced compared to cigarette smoke.

It may sound easy to make a battery operational to keep steady temperatures to heat the tobacco, but it is not. The objective is to heat in a very accurate manner and control the temperature at the same time with one single component. The answer came from a technology widely used in the automotive industry as a temperature sensor that has been adapted by PMI to suit essential requirements. It is not simple either to make a well-balanced aromatic mix of tobacco units having always safety in mind, but not at the expense of pleasure. It is no wonder the PMI has already invested $6 billion in research, product and commercial development, production capacity, scientific substantiation and studies on adult smoker understanding. The heated tobacco units are produced in Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Korea, Romania and Russia. The Italian factory, near Bologna, was specifically built for the manufacturing of heated tobacco products, while in the other countries, PMI has transformed its existing cigarette factories for that purpose.

PMI is not the only company that offers alternative solutions to replace traditional smoking habits. Many companies, among them British American Tobacco with GLO, Japan Tobacco with Ploom, Altria Group and Imperial Brands invest hard to take a portion of this huge market.

Global Heated tobacco and e-vapor products had an estimated total retail value of approximately $18 billion in 2018, following year-on-year growth of around 70%. Heated tobacco accounted for the lion’s share of the total and was the main driver of that growth. These two categories expected to surpass $48 billion till 2023, still a fraction of $465 billion (excluding China and US) of the estimated value of total nicotine market in 2018. The heated tobacco market projection is that special liquids and tobacco units will make up nearly 40% of the revenues, while in the e-vapor market over 76% of the revenues come from device sales.

In the next years the big tobacco industries will share this new market together with the new players of the game, but both they will have to invest seriously and focus on technology and scientific research so as to further decrease all the harmful components and maximize the pleasure of the experience. PMI hired over 430 scientists, engineers and experts in approximately 30 key disciplines, including material science, consumer electronics, clinical science and systems toxicology. This new shift practically means that the market share will be mainly determined by R&D investments, registered patents and advertising budget and not by tobacco suppliers used by the tobacco giants.


However, it seems that some questions will have to wait before they meet with a conclusive answer. Are liquid components and tobacco units less harmful to the user’s health? Will new devices help people cut down on smoking or will they start to vape for its own sake, and not to replace conventional smoking? In 2016 the University of Southern California and more recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an increase of smoking at younger ages, a group of people who had shown a considerable decrease of smoking rates in the past.

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