When you look at the potential of such a zero-risk products as electronic cigarettes you need to understand what is the readiness of smokers to switch. That relates to public-health concerns, social pressure, concern for people around you and many other more subtle things. You cannot say that Indonesia is at the same level of readiness as the U.K, Western Europe or the U.S.
Andre CalantzopoulosWhen you look at the potential of such a zero-risk products as electronic cigarettes you need to understand what is the readiness of smokers to switch. That relates to public-health concerns, social pressure, concern for people around you and many other more subtle things. You cannot say that Indonesia is at the same level of readiness as the U.K, Western Europe or the U.S.
Andre CalantzopoulosShifting Philip Morris to the new a non-risk products doesn't mean that I will give market share to my competitors free of charge. In the markets where we are not present with IQOS yet or the other reduced-risk products, you still need to defend your share of the market. They still represent the bulk of our income, and so far they have financed the billions of dollars we have put behind these new products. But once we go national in a market, and absent capacity constraints, then you shift your resources and your focus to these new products.
Andre CalantzopoulosInnovation, in the minds of people, cannot be something extremely cheap. If you are an average person and you hear that something that is much better than cigarettes comes to the market at the cheapest possible price, you'll not trust it. This is the reason we didn't initially manufacture in China, because you need to create that credibility. Over time you need to make the products available and affordable to different categories of people.
Andre CalantzopoulosWe are focusing Philip Morris organization much more on the new business. We will have very few new traditional product introductions, and as markets switch to IQOS we would remove resources from the old business completely.Next year IQOS becomes profitable, so even the financing from these traditional businesses isn't necessary anymore, because it becomes fully self-sustaining.
Andre CalantzopoulosI think over time the fiscal environment on cigarettes will become different, and the regulatory environment has to differentiate the products. If that is at the expense of cigarettes, so be it - it's not a problem for me. But we need some logical forum where we don't talk ideology but rather we talk about what can really accelerate the conversion. If you do display bans everywhere in the world on cigarettes but you can display IQOS, that's a differentiating measure for me. Then I'm more than willing to accept these measures because they are really conducive to make people switch.
Andre CalantzopoulosThe problem Philip Morris had with electronic cigarettes since the beginning of development was the satisfaction of the smoker. Because the taste is dramatically different and, at the initial stages, the nicotine pharmacokinetics were very slow. You could not get the satisfaction. It's not so easy to crack this code. The taste satisfaction is very important. The closest you are to this, the more chances you have to switch people. It's very nice to have a zero-risk product, but if nobody uses it, you don't have any reduction in public health risk.
Andre Calantzopoulos