LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." For more than a decade, U.S. tobacco giant Philip Morris International has been preparing for the day when the phrase evolves into, "Vape 'em if you got 'em."
Philip Morris started selling its iQOS electronic cigarettes in parts of Japan in 2014 and took them nationwide this past April. As of September, more than 2 million heater units had been sold, raising iQOS' share of the Japanese cigarette market to more than 4%. Miroslaw Zielinski, the company's president for Reduced-Risk Products, said the pace of market penetration is unprecedented.
