The heat-not-burn market has spent five years competing on flavour catalogues and screen sizes. In 2026 the competition is shifting to a different question entirely: how efficiently does a device convert sticks into sessions? That question decides what customers pay per month, and it is where the next round of differentiation is happening.
Here are five trends shaping the category in late 2026 — with the brands driving each one: IQOS, Glo, Ploom and Lil — and where the HEATX range sits in each.
Trend 1: Circumferential and Hybrid Heating Replacing Single-Point Heat
For most of the category's history, heat entered the stick at one point: a blade pushed into the tobacco, or an induction element embedded in it. Both work, and both share the same constraint — the tobacco nearest the heat source is worked hard while the outer mass is heated indirectly.
The shift now underway is towards heating the tobacco evenly from all around. Circumferential chambers wrap heat around the full outer surface of the stick. Hybrid designs combine that with designed airflow, so the tobacco column is worked from the inside out as well as from the chamber wall.
HEATX has been built on this geometry from the start. The 360° circular chamber appears across the range, and the GEN 6.0 adds an airflow layer that works alongside it. In practice the difference shows up in flavour consistency across a session and, more importantly, in the ability to run a stick a second time.
Trend 2: Cost Per Session Replacing Sticker Price
Buyers are getting better at arithmetic. The category's razor-and-blade structure is now widely understood, and the questions in stores have shifted from "how much is the device" to "how much is a stick, and how far does it go."
That is a problem for platforms built around one stick per session, because the honest answer to "how far does it go" is "one session" — the same answer for every major platform, whether the heat comes from an IQOS induction coil or a Glo blade.
| Metric that decides annual cost | What it depends on |
|---|---|
| Sticks purchased per year | Sessions per stick and weekly usage |
| Sessions per stick | Heating geometry, not firmware |
| Device price | One-time, amortised across device life |
Two sessions from one stick halves the largest line in the annual bill. That is why it is becoming the headline claim rather than a footnote — and it is the single biggest reason buyers who would otherwise default to a major brand ask about the alternative.
Trend 3: Control Moving Into the Device
The other visible shift is user control. Fixed temperature profiles were once presented as a virtue — consistent, no configuration, no way to get it wrong. That framing is fading, and 2026 devices increasingly let the user pick how the stick is heated.
IQOS led with the touchscreen and session management features on the ILUMA i generation. Ploom and Lil keep interfaces deliberately minimal, betting that simplicity retains users better than options do. Both positions have customers.
The middle ground is selectable temperature modes without a menu system. The HEATX GEN2.0 offers four modes — SOFT, MILD, NORMAL and BOOST — cycled with a double press, and the GEN 6.0 provides two selectable temperature curves. The control is real; the interface is still a button.
Trend 4: Manufacturing Credibility Becoming a Buying Criterion
As the category matures, buyers have been burned enough times to start asking who actually builds the hardware. The proliferation of similar-looking devices from unrelated brands has made "who is the manufacturer" a legitimate question rather than a pedantic one.
The signals buyers now look for are concrete: how many technical staff are directly employed, what the R&D qualification profile looks like, what percentage of the line is automated, what the annual capacity is, and whether third-party test reports exist for the specific model.
HEATX operates as Shenzhen Qianhe Technology Co., Ltd., with more than 400 technical staff, 57 PhDs and 95 master's-degree holders in R&D, approximately 45% line automation, and capacity in the region of 20 million units per year. A 15-day milestone from prototype to mould tooling supports private-label development. For a distributor, that is the difference between a supplier and a trading intermediary.
Trend 5: Form Factor Consolidating on One Piece
The holder-and-case architecture that defined the category's first generation is losing ground. Users want one object in a pocket and one cable on a desk, and devices that ask for more are increasingly treated as a compromise rather than a premium feature.
Weight is part of the same trend. A device that pulls at a shirt pocket gets left in a bag. The practical target is under 70 g with enough cell to reach the end of a day.
HEATX models are single-piece designs across the range: the GEN 5.0 at 64 g with a 2000mAh cell, the GEN2.0 in a deliberately narrow 92.5 × 34.8 × 20.6 mm frame, and the GEN 6.0 at 21.5 × 30 × 105 mm in matte anodised aluminium. Charging is Type-C throughout, roughly 90 minutes to full.
The Five Trends and Where Each Platform Stands
| Trend | Leaders | HEATX position |
|---|---|---|
| Circumferential and hybrid heating | Category-wide shift | Core architecture across the range |
| Cost per session as the buying metric | Buyer-driven | Two sessions per stick |
| Control in the device | IQOS (touchscreen), Ploom (minimal) | Four modes via button, no menu |
| Manufacturing credibility | Buyer-driven | Direct manufacturer, published R&D figures |
| One-piece form factor | Ploom, Lil, HEATX | Single piece across the range |
What to Watch Into 2027
Two things are worth watching closely.
First, whether the major platforms move on stick re-use. The technical barrier is not high; the commercial barrier is the razor-and-blade model itself. A platform that already sells the world's deepest flavour catalogue has limited incentive to halve consumable volume.
Second, how quickly buyers adopt cost-per-session as their primary comparison. Every previous shift in this category has been driven by retail framing rather than engineering. When the shelf starts advertising sessions-per-stick rather than screen size, the category's competitive axis will have changed for good.
Summary
Flavour breadth, ecosystem depth and brand trust still matter, and IQOS, Glo, Ploom and Lil all lead on at least one of them. What is changing in 2026 is that these are no longer the questions that decide a purchase. Heating geometry, cost per session, real control, verifiable manufacturing and a carryable body are the criteria that now separate one device from another.
Full specifications for the HEATX range are at heatxlab.com/products.
