Digital News Report – According to a Japanese newspaper, Sony Corp. will no longer manufacturer the 3.5-inch floppy discs ending this fiscal year and will withdraw completely from the floppy disc sales at the end of March 2011 in Japan.
Sony has a 70 percent share in the floppy disc market but as technology changes, there is less demand for the 3.5-inch floppies. USB flash drives and SD cards have become a more popular choice because of their larger storage size and compact design.
The first 3.5 inch single sided floppy discs were sold in 1982 and stored only 264 kilobytes (KB). The next year, the double density floppy disk were sold and they stored 1 Megabyte (MB) of data. In 1987, the 3½-inch High Density floppy was released and it held 1.44 MB of data.
Ref: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20100424p2a00m0na008000c.html