Vaping’s big; we know that. It’s hugely popular and it’s here to stay. And, let’s be honest, any vaper who knows their salt’s aware that it’s a big-time activity not just in the UK, but around the wider world. But, that said, just how much?
Well, to be fair, given vaping’s relatively new explosion in popularity and cultural saturation, research is still a little thin on the ground, yet it’s estimated there are at least 20.8 million vape users worldwide. Fair enough, but how does that break down – who’s vaping where in the world and in what numbers…?
North America
The world’s top vaping market, the United States features more than nine million users who spend in excess of $3.7 billion a year on vaping products. Canada’s vaping market, meanwhile, is said to lie somewhere between 308,000 and 946,000 users; with the lower end of that scale representing those who tend to use an e-cig device on a daily basis.
Europe
Home to a large and healthy vaping market, Europe’s highest growth is currently occurring in the UK, where’s there’s as many as 2.8 million vapers – as much as a four-fold rise on the number of just six years ago. Unsurprisingly then, in Britain e-cig devices are one of the fastest-growing products by both volume and value with a 50 percent year-on-year increase to around 17.3 million units shifted in 2016.
Russia is an increasingly widening market too, accounting for more than 1.5 million vape users – indeed, there’s in excess of 500 vape shops in the city of Moscow, while 1,400 of them are spread across the country as a whole. Similarly, Germany can now count up to two million vapers within its borders; a number that’s expected to rise exponentially in the coming years. And to the west of Europe’s powerhouse nation, in France research suggests that between 7.7 and 9.2 million of its population have tried an e-cig device so far.
Asia
Given it’s the most populous continent on the planet (with more than four billion inhabitants), it perhaps ought to be no surprise that Asia accounts for the largest combined market for e-cigs, mods and e juice. That said, far from its biggest nation (in terms of population), Malaysia, is home to Asia’s biggest concentration of vapers – an estimated one million of them (Malaysians have truly gone crazy for vaping). This speedy growth can be attributed to the country’s government not imposing regulation on the activity – thus far. Going forward, that looks set to change.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan’s seeing a rapid vaping rise right now; in 2016 alone, vapor-generating devices produced $4.6 million (US) in revenue here. Yet ironically, although the global giant that’s China might manufacture a significant percentage of the vape devices sold around the world, its e-cig-using community’s relatively small. In South Korea, there’s believed to be around one million vapers, while in Indonesia around 711,000 people vape or use e-cigs and possibly anywhere up to 4 million people in the Philippines do so.
Finally, estimates suggest about 4.4 percent of Australia’s population regularly vapes (versus 12.2 percent that smokes daily); that equates to around 2.94 million smokers and about 129,000 regular vapers.
