There may be no smoke without fire – but there’s certainly plenty of fire without smoke in the electronic cigarette market.

As I wandered the halls of trade event the National Convenience Show yesterday I counted an incredible 13 different suppliers offering variations on these high-tech sticks. The sector is understood to be worth as much as £150m in sales in the UK alone, although most of this is still online.

Whatever the actual size of the UK market – Nielsen puts retail sales at £23.9m – the show made it all too clear just how competition in the e-cig market is hotting up. One of the exhibitors at the show was NJOY – maker of the bestselling US e-cigarette and holder of a 49.7% share of the US market – which only last week revealed it had now set its sights on the UK.

Despite being a former 20-a-day man (a long time and a few asthma attacks ago), I find it hard to understand why anyone would want to inhale vaporised liquid nicotine and exhale odourless water vapour. But what do I know? The crowds around many of the e-cigarette stands at the NEC yesterday suggested the devices have captured the imagination of retailers and consumers.

And the products deserve attention – offering a surprisingly wide range from the fairly standard imitation filter cigarette to stylish black sticks that wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi flick (In fact, one supplier proudly showed me his personal e-cig, a custom creation not unlike Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver).

Geeky excitement aside, there is plenty of money to be made in e-cigs – but surely not enough to sustain the dozen or so suppliers I saw yesterday, not to mention the others out there that didn’t attend NCS.

As one industry veteran wryly suggested to me yesterday, the situation is much like that of the energy shots market a few years ago – when a lot of players made a lot of noise, but only a few of the products are still around today.

And, while I’d put money on e-cigarettes having far more staying power in the UK than energy shots, there is some inevitable shakedown and consolidation to come as the less savvy players run out of puff.

For more analysis of the issues surrounding electronic cigarettes, see this week’s issue of The Grocer.

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