RICHMOND, Va. — Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) is hoping to capitalize on the growing appetite for alternatives to traditional smokes like e-cigarettes with a new Marlboro-branded product that heats tobacco rather than burning it.

Last week, the world's second-biggest tobacco company detailed its plans to release the Marlboro HeatSticks in cities in Japan and Italy later this year, with further expansion plans in 2015.

The short, cigarette-like sticks are heated to maximum of 660 degrees Fahrenheit in a hollow pen-like device called iQOS, creating a tobacco-flavored nicotine vapor. Unlike the increasingly popular e-cigarettes that use liquid nicotine, HeatSticks contain real tobacco, a point the company believes will make them more attractive to cigarette smokers.

It's one of several "reduced-risk" products PMI plans to test as the industry diversifies beyond traditional cigarettes amid declining demand.

The company, based in New York and Switzerland, has spent about $2 billion over more than a decade on development of the products and expects that iQOS would boost its profit by $700 million when sales reach 30 billion units. The overseas Marlboro maker announced plans in January to invest up to 500 million euros (about $680 million) for two plants in Italy to make the products. The company also announced last week that it has purchased U.K.-based e-cigarette maker Nicocigs Ltd.

HeatSticks build on Accord — a product with a clunky pager-like heater in which smaller cigarettes were inserted — that was test-marketed in the late 1990s by Philip Morris USA, which spun off its international business in 2008 and is owned by Altria Group Inc. PMI and former parent company Altria have agreed to share their technology for electronic cigarettes and other new alternatives to traditional cigarettes, so HeatSticks could be marketed in the U.S. eventually.