Sony: No floppy disks from 2011

Sony has announced it will discontinue the production of floppy disks in Japan from March 2011.

The company has already stopped distributing floppy disks in international markets, due to its falling demand, according to BBC News.

First introduced in 1971 by IBM, the floppy disk has been around for more than 30 years, but began its sharp downfall after 1998, when Apple decided not to include it in its iMac computer, followed by Dell’s decision to manufacture PCs without floppy disks from 2003.

In 2007, computing store PC World stopped trading floppy disks, but Sony continued to sell them worldwide.
Sony’s decision might trigger the end of the floppy-disk era, as portable USB drives, external hard drives and online storage become the norm.