DUBAI: Philip Morris International Inc (PMI) marks the 10th anniversary of the introduction of its leading smoke-free product, IQOS. The launch of this smoke-free innovation was a breakthrough moment toward achieving the company’s commitment to a future without cigarettes.

In Japan—the first market where IQOS was launched in 2014—newly released public health data by the National Health and Nutritional Survey (NHNS) an annual nationwide health examination survey conducted since 1948 by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, shows a 46 percent decrease in cigarette-smoking prevalence since 2014, dropping from 19.6 percent of all adults to 10.6 percent in 2022.

This decline correlates with the introduction of heated tobacco products and their subsequent widespread adoption by millions of adults who smoke in Japan. The country continues to have the highest number of heated-tobacco-product users, and tobacco prevalence has not increased since they were introduced. Not only has the total tobacco use prevalence continued to decline, but the introduction of heated tobacco products in Japan appears to have helped many adult smokers transition away from cigarettes to less harmful alternatives, leading to a reduction in the number of adults smoking cigarettes. A decade after it was launched in Japan, IQOS now generates over $10 billion of PMI’s annual net revenues, the product is available in over 70 markets worldwide, and 30.8 million adults use it.

PMI CEO Jacek Olczak said: “With the debut of IQOS, we launched PMI’s vision of a smoke-free company, creating an opportunity to solve the problem of smoking. Every day, IQOS demonstrates its potential for this, as evidenced by the approximately 22 million adults around the world who have fully switched to it and stopped smoking. IQOS is the world’s leading smoke-free product, and we are committed to continuing to lead the way to a future where better alternatives have completely replaced cigarettes, while moving forward to become a predominantly smoke-free company by 2030. Today, PMI employs over 80,000 people, and I would like to mark this anniversary by thanking them and their predecessors—all who made this transformation possible.”

With PMI transforming into an industry-leading science and technology company, smoke-free products account for 38 percent of the company’s net revenues in Q3 2024, up from practically 0 percent in 2014.