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Goodbye Pod Systems
HELLO AIO KITS
Vapouround columnist Victor Mullin predicts the major trends of
2020... and it is good news for AIO fans and hobbyist vapers.
Words: Columnist Victor Mullin
Goodbye 2019. Hello 2020.
As the year of 2019 draws to a close and vape shop owners and
vapers reading this are dragging out the Christmas decorations
and thinking of what to stock for the upcoming holiday season,
reviewers like myself are looking back at the previous year and
thinking…what comes next?
Looking ahead to the coming year is something a lot of us as
vapers do, more so shop owners and reviewers as we try and
pin down what may be coming up for at least the fi rst half of a
new year and the fi rst half of a new release schedule.
Without a doubt 2019 was the year of the pod, there is no
getting around it. The pod market exploded in 2018 and that
ever-increasing bubble expanded in 2019, but with any market
bubble, it was bound to burst, and burst it has.
With a marked decrease in the number of new pods coming
out, and with the closure or mergers of some smaller pod
companies over in China happening over the past few months, I
think it’s safe to assume that the pod market expansion is now
over. The pod market is now retracting.
The big question is, what will replace it for 2020?
Well, we have already seen the fi rst signs of it happening. With
the release of AIO (All In One) systems now taking over from the
pod market, the larger companies like Lost Vape, Aspire, Geek
52 VM26
Vape and the likes, have switched tactics from the pod market,
to a reinvention of what used to be the hobbyist side of things,
the all-in-one system.
Gone are the days of the large, bulky, and sometime heavy,
AIOs of 2015 and 2016, replaced with lightweight, easy-to-
use modifi cations of a pod-based system, but without that
disposable pod and, in its place, a disposable coil head with
better battery life.
For 2020’s fi rst half, the AIO will reign supreme, but the AIO reign
won’t last as long, or make as much money, as the pod market
has done. Along with the AIOs however, the cyclic market of
vaping will turn its attention and marketing back to the one thing
us reviewers enjoy, the hobbyist side of the market.
RTAs, RDAs, high powered mods and the likes have been on a
decline on the releases since January of 2019. There has been
a very marked decrease in the amount of rebuildable devices
being released on the market in 2019 compared to 2018 and
that market will make a comeback - not in the fi rst half of 2020
though, but in its latter half.
A return to the “traditional” starter kit is also seeing the fi rst
signs of appearing with mini pen-style kits (Berserker S for
instance) being produced with full 510 fi tted tanks, which will
be something for the vape shop owners to look out for as new
pod releases become few and far between.
To fi nish off the article, I just want to wish everyone reading this
a safe and prosperous New Year, and whichever holiday you
celebrate at this time of year, I hope it’s a good one.