Sony Ending Production Of Floppy Discs [Sony Japan To Cease Producing Floppy Disks After Almost 30 Years, Says 12 Million Were Sold Last Year]

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Sort of a sentimental story for those of us who used computers before flash drives, but Sony Japan says they’re going to end domestic (Japan) sales of floppy discs in March 2011. They ended international sales of their floppy discs in all regions (except for India) last month and are finally pulling the plug on their native Japan.

The Mainichi Daily News reports that Sony produces 70% of the floppy discs sold in Japan every year – so this is an epic development in the surely riveting Japanese floppy market. Sony developed the 3.5-inch floppy format in 1981, and the new format quickly outpaced the others. As many of you probably know, floppy discs were popular when we only had to transfer word processor files – but as our files got bigger and bigger and flash USB drives became common and cheap, floppy discs went to wayside. Andrew wrote a bit on the end of the floppy disk way back in 2007 here.

According to the Mainichi Daily News, Sony’s floppy disc sales reached their peak in 2002 when they company sold 42 million discs in Japan. They still sold a whopping 12 million in fiscal year 2009 in Japan. That number still seems astronomically high to me (who’s buying all those?). Sony will still keep selling floppy discs in India and very few other regions. Nothing on when those regions will see their floppy sales end.

For nostalgic information, the common 3.5-inch floppy standard had 1.44MB of space. The HiFD 3.5-inch floppy discs, introduced in 1999, had a reportedly 200MB of space – but it was probably too little too late for the old storage format.

When was the first time you used a floppy disc? When was the last time?

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