Sony kills off the floppy disk in Japan

Who knew that 3.5-inches could bring so much pleasure?
Who knew that 3.5-inches could bring so much pleasure?

Sony has announced it is discontinuing manufacturing of floppy disks in Japan, ending a 29-year-old love affair with the technology.

Sony has said that a "lack of demand" – who'd have thought it? – was the main reason for ending production, which accounts for around 70 per cent market share of the storage media in Japan.

The discontinuing of disks isn't immediate with Sony announcing it will stop production in 2011.

That said the company already stopped producing floppy disks outside Japan in March this year so the writing has been on the wall for some time.

Disk jockey

Sony first began producing floppy disks way back in 1981. Its disk heyday came in 2000, when it was shipping around 47 million disks.

Since then, the rise of CDs, DVDs and more recently USB drives have seen sales shrink to 8.5 million.

Sony is one of the last companies to stop production of the floppy, effectively killing off the format it helped pioneer.

Via The Examiner

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.