Floppy Disk Is Dead

Filed in archive Did you know on May 5, 2010

After nearly 30 years, the once dominate 3.5-inch floppy disk will soon go the way of the cassette tape. With the advent of CDs and later, DVDs, the use of the plastic floppys and its limited storage capacity were quickly deserted.

12 years after the original G3 iMac dropped support for the 3.5-inch floppy disk, Sony has finally decided to stop making them. The reason is a lack of demand. The surprise is that it took so long.

Floppy disks are still commonly used in Japan, where Sony has 70 per cent of the market share. Companies sold about 12 million floppy disks in 2009, although that's a steep decline from 2002, when 47 million were purchased.

Who uses 3.5-inch floppy disks anymore? No one. So it is a mainly symbolic announcement that Sony will no longer be producing the disks in Japan, officially putting the last death knell on the format.

Sony stopped making floppy disks in the US and other major markets long ago, and every other big corporation has pulled out of this old format.

If you still rely on the massive 1.44MB of space to move files quickly around between far-flung computers, don't worry: Sony will keep the production lines running until March 2011, giving you a year to stockpile the things. You won't be alone. Apparently, "lack of demand" is somewhat relative, and Sony sold a jaw-dropping 12 million floppies in Japan during 2009.

The 3.5 inch floppy was first introduced in 1981, and hit the height of its sales in 2000.