What is the “typical” e-cigarette on sale in Britain? Read some of the media and you might be forgiven for believing that it’s a luridly-coloured disposable device (filled with an exotically-named liquid, naturally). But in reality of course there’s a good deal more to the market than that – not everything is pre-filled and disposable, and at ECigIntelligence our Hardware Tracker enables us and our subscribers to analyse trends in the hardware-only vape market.
Like most of our data tools, this covers multiple countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the US as well as the UK – but this month let’s take a look solely at the British situation. One of the most obvious lessons is that there isn’t a really a “typical” e-cigarette, and it’s interesting not only to see what’s changed in terms of hardware features over the last five years, but also what hasn’t.
Consider batteries, for example. Five years ago, around two thirds of e-cigarette products on the UK market had a built-in battery; today the proportion is over 80%. This headline figure does, however, conceal a big difference between the sub-categories of products. All of those that we term “basic” or “open pod” products come with batteries, but still only about 40% of “advanced” kits do.
While built-in batteries have become more ubiquitous, average product sizes have shrunk, from an average of 106 cubic millimetres five years ago to 89 cubic millimetres now. Again, however, there are differences between the sub-categories.
Advanced kits are bigger than basic kits and those in turn are significantly bigger than open pod kits. But it’s basic kits that have seen the most notable change in size, shrinking by 20%. Products in the other sub-categories have actually increased in size, on average, though not by so great a degree.
Average tank capacity has remained almost unchanged at almost exactly 2ml for some years, although it was slightly higher at the beginning of the five-year period that our Hardware Tracker covers. In recent years this consistency has been seen across all three of the sub-categories – advanced, basic and open pods – although five years ago there was a much greater difference, with advanced kits having notably larger tanks.
Finally, the trend with built-in screens (charted in this month’s graphic) might surprise some. Today, around 45% of products have a built-in OLED screen – remember, this doesn’t include disposables – and that percentage is barely higher than it was in 2019. But around 2021-2022, the proportion rose to higher than 60%; see the big hump in the middle of the left-hand graph.
Closer examination, via the right-hand graph, reveals the reason why. The proportion of advanced kits with screens (the top blue line) has remained very high and fairly consistent, at around 90%, over the whole five-year period. During that time, screens became more prevalent in open pods (the bottom yellow line), from around 10% to around 20%, although there was a lot of variation year-by-year.
But it was with basic kits (the central line) where the most dramatic changes were seen: the proportion rose from about 10% in 2019 to more than 40% during 2021, finally dropping back to some 30% today.
These numbers are not just historically interesting, but they also help provide some clues as to which way the market might be heading – although, of course, they also demonstrate that it sometimes heads in surprising directions, and that product trends in the different sub-categories are by no means uniform. Most importantly, perhaps, they illustrate how the e-cigarette sector has been one of constant innovation…and as bans on disposables loom around the world, further innovation to meet the demands of their users will be as important as ever.
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