Andre Yoskowitz
25 Apr 2010 23:30
Sony has announced this weekend that they will be discontinuing all sales of the 3.5-inch floppy disc in Japan starting in 2011, effectively killing off the three decade old disk type.
The company helped pioneer the disk in 1981, introducing the technology that year and then starting to sell the discs in 1983.
At its height in the year 2000, Sony shipped 47 million disks, but that number has progressively fallen, reaching just 8.5 million in 2009. However, that also begs the question, why were so many floppies shipped even in 2009 and who is still using them?
Sony holds 70 percent of the Japanese market share for the disks, compared to around 40 percent globally.
The company cited lack of demand as the main reasoning behind the decision, given the cheap prices of much smaller and higher capacity devices, like USB flash drives.