PC World will stop selling floppy disks once the current stock has run out. The computing retailer claims the amount of data (1.44MB) a floppy disk holds is no longer adequate for most day-to-day requirements.
The increasing use of digital downloads and photography means many files are now too large for a floppy disk to hold and with plenty of other storage devices — USB keys, rewritable CDs, memory cards — having significantly more storage capacity, PC World feels floppy disks are now largely redundant. The company also says the increased availability of broadband and wireless internet connections has made small-scale removable storage devices almost obsolete.
The global market for floppy disks has been in decline since the late 1990s, with 700 million estimated to have been sold last year compared with more than two billion in 1998. IBM introduced the first floppy disk in 1971 with Sony releasing the 3.5 inch floppy disk in 1981 which went on to become the storage standard throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
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