R.I.P 3.5″ floppy disks

Well we cant say we didnt see this coming.  Think about it?  When is the last time you saw someone use a floppy disk?  When is the last time you saw them on a laptop or notebook.  Most desktops dont even have them anymore. While its true you can still buy them and can buy a USB floppy drive to read them, why do you need them anymore?  These days most people use USB thumb drives to carry data from point A to point.  Or, there are online services like DropBox, SkyDrive, Sugar Sync, Google, etc, etc ,et al where consumers can store files and get to them later as long as there is Internet access.  Floppy disks are fading away like cassettes and vinyl records.

The big news about this is what Sony announced this week.

Sony announced on April 23rd that they will be discontinuing sales of the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. The news marks a major end to a nearly three decade history of the disk type that the company helped to pioneer.

According to Sony, they introduced the 3.5 inch floppy disk size to the world in 1981, and began sales within Japan in 1983. Sony had shipped approximately 47 million disks within the country at its peak around the year 2000, but that number had fallen to around 8.5 million by 2009, Sankei News reported.

What this will mean in the US isnt 100% clear right now, but you can guess.  If you have any floppy disks around, keep them, they may turn into collector’s items.