Look at all these rumours, surrounding me every day
It looks like Japan Tobacco are going to be releasing a new Heat Not Burn product later this year, if news reports are to be believed. Japan Tobacco is one of the world’s leading tobacco companies, producing famous cigarette and hand rolling tobacco brands including Camel, Silk Cut, Winston, Old Holborn and Amber Leaf. Seeing global cigarette sales on a downward trajectory throughout most of the developed world they have announced that they will be bringing out a new heated tobacco device.
Japan Tobacco must be really concerned at the success of the iQOS in their home territory, where it has proven to be incredibly popular. Sales of HnB products in Japan are massive, leading to an analyst predicting that HnB products will account for a quite astonishing 29% of Japan’s tobacco market this year – up from 16% in 2017. Japan Tobacco did release the Ploom Tech Mevius in mid-2017, but obviously they are not putting too much faith in that or they wouldn’t be aiming to bring out another similar product so soon afterwards.
One of the reasons that Heat Not Burn products are so popular in Japan is because of Japan’s crazy attitude towards e-cigarettes, which are to all intents and purposes banned. There could be many reasons for this absolute madness, including the fact that the government owns at least one third of Japan Tobacco, and they don’t want to lose even more revenue to those pesky e-cigarettes.
Things can only get better
Here at Heat Not Burn UK we think it is great that there is potential for another heated tobacco product to be released, because we believe that the more devices there are on the market the more this competition will drive forward innovation. Just like in the early days of e-cigarettes, when most of the products were bloody awful, the technology will only get better as time goes by, exactly as it has done in the global vaping market. Will this new Japan Tobacco device be better than the iQOS or Glo? Currently we don’t know the answer to that question, as details are extremely scant, but Japan Tobacco have said they will be investing a staggering $917 million on the development and production of reduced risk products (RRP) over the next three years, so you would expect it to be pretty good, wouldn’t you?
One thing for sure is that we are going to be in for some very interesting times, seeing the big players all bringing out new heated tobacco devices; it can only enhance the whole HnB experience for the consumer, which is a very good thing, and we will be here as usual bringing you all the very latest info.
