OK, here is my gut impression on this.
Cigarette sales are decline. Cigarette customers are treated like animals. The ANTZ are still trying to ban menthol (Newport is Lorillard's #1 brand.) The FDA is (on paper) open to reduced harm alternatives.
E-cigarette market is growing by leaps and bounds. 5 years on the U.S. market with no reports of significant illness or injury by a standard e-cigarette and the ANTZ haven't been able to show them to be a danger nor stop smokers from switching, in spite of their dire warnings. The market has taken hold in spite of everything. One U.S. company (blu) is already available in most markets and recently broke ground with major retailer and other brands are popping up right beside them on store shelves. Tobacco companies already have a huge source of nicotine at their disposal.
Tobacco companies would be stupid not to jump on that gravy train and even more stupid to then start changing things - if it ain't broke, don't fix it! I'd call whomever made the decision at Lorillard a genius except a true genius would have developed their own device using their brand name recognition as soon as the FDA was beaten in court by Sottera! LOL!
Tobacco companies would be foolish to make e-cigarettes undesirable to customers. If anything, they'll have a ton of money to make them even better, so customers are happy and don't want to quit using them. They could eventually enjoy the status liquor holds in this country as a socially acceptable drug. E-cigarettes don't cause them to lose any business if smokers switch from their cigarettes to their e-cigarettes rather than NRTs. E-cigarettes would help them RETAIN customers. So, rather than a threat, if I was Lorillard, I'd see them as an asset. E-cigarettes are possibly their best chance at a marketable, socially acceptable, FDA-approved tobacco harm reduction product. Why ruin that??
Therefore, it will benefit them to fight the ridiculous laws against e-cigarettes, pour funding into safety/health research, do marketing research to find out what the customers want in a device (when the other big 2 jump in, the fight for market dominance should initiate a battle to be the best - something new to the industry as cigarettes didn't really complete based on performance) and there is a chance to thumb their nose at the FDA and ANTZ.
I don't really see a downside here. All of the concerns of BT turning e-cigarettes into useless pieces of junk and encouraging over regulation by the FDA just make no
sense from a business standpoint. One thing we all know is that BT is all about making money! If all of the dire predictions come true about what BT would do to the e-cigarettes, people would just end up buying more from boutique companies and ignore the mass-marketed BT junk - which means BT loses money. If BT manages to eliminate the boutique companies through draconian regulations, then people would stop buying e-cigarettes (because they would suck) and the market is dead and they (BT) are back to square one - declining cigarette markets and people buying NRT instead. Seriously, what would be the point?
The only thing that makes
sense from a business standpoint (ie. making money) is to make their product desired by the public and you don't achieve that by sabotaging both your product quality and supporting draconian regulations of your product! You do that by fighting government over-regulation that reduces your product's market appeal, continually making improvements to your product and increasing consumer confidence by implementing and publicizing your self-imposed strict manufacturing and handling process standards and responsible labeling.
My only concern is that BT is as smart as I am about business and I'm not even really that smart, so there is a good chance they are. LOL!
Think about it - when Toshiba started selling DVD players in 1996, VCR companies didn't start making their own crappy DVD players hoping people would just go back to buying their VCRs! Innovation and progress is a speeding train and smart companies know you either jump on or get flattened.
That's my take and I sure hope I'm right!