Altria Sales and Market Share of Oral Tobacco Products

Vape. Pexels Image.

This article covers Altria Group’s sales and market share of oral tobacco products (previously smokeless products).

Let’s look at the numbers!

For other key statistics of Altria, you may find more resources on this page: Altria key stats.

Please use the table of contents to navigate this page.

Definitions

To help readers understand the content better, the following terms and glossaries have been provided.

Oral Tobacco Segment: Altria’s oral tobacco segment primarily focuses on manufacturing, distributing, and selling smokeless tobacco products, including snus and moist snuff.

These products are marketed as alternatives to traditional cigarettes. They are consumed by placing them in the mouth, either under the lip or between the gum and cheek, rather than being smoked.

This segment includes popular brands like Copenhagen and Skoal. The company promotes these products within legal and regulatory frameworks, focusing on adult tobacco consumers.

This segment represents a significant part of Altria’s broader strategy to diversify its product portfolio beyond traditional combustible cigarettes in response to changing consumer preferences and a growing emphasis on harm reduction in the tobacco industry.

Retail Share: In the context of a specific product, retail share refers to the percentage of sales or volume that the product holds within a particular retail market or category.

This metric significantly indicates the product’s market position, competitiveness, and appeal to consumers within retail environments. It’s calculated by dividing the product’s sales by the total sales of all similar products in the same category, then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.

Retail share offers insights into the product’s performance, helps understand consumer preferences, and aids in strategic decision-making for marketing, distribution, and product development.

According to Altria’s annual report, its oral tobacco products segment’s retail share results exclude international volume. Retail share results for oral tobacco products are based on data from Circana, a tracking service that uses a sample of stores to project market share and depict share trends.

This service tracks sales in the food, drug, mass merchandisers, convenience, military, dollar store and club trade classes on the number of cans and packs sold.

Oral tobacco products are defined by Circana as moist smokeless, snus and oral nicotine pouches. New types of oral tobacco products, as well as new packaging configurations of existing oral tobacco products, may or may not be equivalent to existing MST products on a can-for-can basis.

For example, one pack of snus or one can of oral nicotine pouches, irrespective of the number of pouches in the pack, is assumed to be equivalent to one can of MST.

Because this service represents retail share performance only in key trade channels, it should not be considered a precise measurement of actual retail share. It is retail services’ standard practice to periodically refresh their retail scan services, which could restate retail share results that were previously released in these services.

Copenhagen: Altria’s Copenhagen refers to a brand of smokeless tobacco products, specifically moist snuff, produced and marketed by Altria Group, Inc.

Copenhagen is one of the oldest brands in the smokeless tobacco market, having been introduced in the United States in the early 19th century. It offers a range of flavors and cuts, catering to a variety of preferences among adult consumers.

As a mature product category, smokeless tobacco, like Copenhagen, is subject to regulatory and health considerations, with its use and sale regulated in many jurisdictions due to health risks associated with tobacco consumption.

Skoal: Skoal is a moist smokeless tobacco product, also known as dipping tobacco. It is produced by the Altria Group (previously known as Philip Morris Companies, Inc.) through its subsidiary, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company.

Skoal was first introduced in the United States in 1934 and is known for its wide range of flavours and formats, such as pouches and fine cuts. The product is placed in the user’s lip, typically under the lip or between the lip and gum, allowing nicotine to be absorbed through the mouth’s tissues

Skoal, like other smokeless tobacco products, is often marketed as an alternative to smoking cigarettes, although it carries its health risks and warnings.

on!: “On!” is a brand of nicotine pouches produced by Altria Group, a leading producer and marketer of tobacco products.

These pouches are designed to offer adult tobacco consumers an alternative to traditional cigarettes and vaping products. They are smoke-free and spit-free and come in a variety of flavors and nicotine strengths, allowing users to consume nicotine discreetly without the need for smoking or vaping.

Altria’s introduction of “on!” is part of its strategy to diversify its product offerings beyond conventional tobacco products and adapt to the evolving preferences of adult tobacco consumers seeking alternative nicotine delivery systems.

Back To Table Of Contents

Insight & Summary of Altria’s Oral Tobacco Products Sales Volumes and Market Share

Altria’s Oral Tobacco Products segment tells a dramatic transformation story — the on! nicotine pouch brand, launched around 2021, has grown at an extraordinary pace and is now displacing Skoal and Copenhagen’s combined dominance, even as the segment’s overall retail market share has eroded sharply, most likely reflecting intensifying competition from products outside Altria’s own portfolio.

• on!: An Extraordinary Growth Trajectory, Reshaping the Entire Segment’s Mix on!’s sales mix share grew from 5.9% (2021, its first year of disclosure) to 24.3% (2025) — a more than fourfold increase in just four years — with growth rates of 70.5%, 38.5%, 40.2%, and 10.9% across that stretch, by far the strongest sustained growth of any brand in the entire dataset. This is the single most significant structural development in Altria’s Oral Tobacco Products segment: a brand that didn’t exist in the disclosed data before 2021 is now approaching a quarter of total segment sales volume.

• Copenhagen and Skoal: Both in Sustained, Accelerating Decline Copenhagen’s sales mix share fell from a peak of 64.7% (2019) to 49.5% (2025), while Skoal’s fell from 34.0% (2015) to just 17.5% (2025) — both brands posting their steepest volume declines in the dataset in the most recent year shown (Copenhagen -9.6% and Skoal -13.0% in 2025). This isn’t merely on! taking share from a stable base; both legacy brands are contracting in absolute volume terms even as on! expands, suggesting a genuine shift in consumer preference within Altria’s own portfolio rather than simple category growth being redistributed.

• Total Segment Volume: A Persistent Decline Despite on!’s Strength Despite on!’s explosive growth, Oral Tobacco Product Total Sales Volume has still declined in eight of the eleven years shown, including -5.5% in 2025 — its steepest decline in the dataset. This means on!’s growth, while dramatic in relative terms, has not been sufficient to offset Copenhagen and Skoal’s combined volume losses, a genuinely important nuance: the segment’s overall unit volume is shrinking even as its internal composition shifts dramatically toward the newer brand.

• Market Share: A Sharp and Accelerating Erosion in Retail Share, Distinct From the Internal Mix Shift Total oral tobacco retail share (U.S. only) fell from 55.0% (2014) to just 31.9% (2025) — a striking decline, with the pace clearly accelerating in the most recent years (falling by roughly 5 percentage points per year in 2023-2025, compared to a more gradual 1-2 point annual decline in earlier years). This retail-share erosion is a fundamentally different phenomenon from the internal Copenhagen/Skoal/on! mix shift: it reflects Altria’s position relative to the broader oral tobacco category (including competitors’ products), and its accelerating pace suggests competitive pressure from outside Altria’s portfolio has intensified meaningfully in recent years, even as on! has been the fastest-growing brand within Altria’s own lineup.

• Structural Takeaway: Altria’s Oral Tobacco Products segment is undergoing two simultaneous but distinct transformations: an internal shift toward on! and away from Copenhagen and Skoal, and a broader external erosion of total category retail share that has accelerated sharply in 2023-2025. Given on!’s growth rate has already decelerated substantially from its 2022-2024 range (38-40%) to just 10.9% in 2025, while total retail share erosion shows no signs of slowing, the trend worth monitoring going forward is whether on!’s slowing growth signals it approaching a more mature, stable mix share, or whether Altria’s overall oral tobacco retail-share decline will continue accelerating regardless of on!’s trajectory — a distinction with meaningful implications for whether the segment’s revenue resilience (still growing modestly through 2025) can be sustained if both trends continue on their current paths.

The table below combines all key Altria’s oral tobacco products revenue, sales, and market share metrics into a single view for the latest three fiscal years.

Back To Table Of Contents

Oral tobacco products sales volumes breakdown

Back To Table Of Contents

Oral tobacco products sales volumes mix

Back To Table Of Contents

Oral tobacco products sales volumes growth

Back To Table Of Contents

Copenhagen, Skoal, and on! retail share

Altria’s retail share definition is available here: retail share.

Back To Table Of Contents

References and Credits

1. All financial figures presented in this article were obtained and referenced from Altria’s annual and quarterly reports, published on the company’s investor relations page: Altria Investor Relations.

2. Pexels Images

Back To Table Of Contents

Disclosure

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to assist us in writing some of the text in this article. However, the data is directly obtained from original sources (usually the quarterly and annual reports) and meticulously cross-checked by our editors multiple times to ensure its accuracy and reliability.

If you find the information in this article helpful, please consider sharing it on social media. Additionally, providing a link back to this article from any website can help us create more content like this in the future.

Thank you for your support and engagement! Your involvement helps us continue to provide high-quality, reliable content.

Back To Table Of Contents