I am not for the first time taking a slight tangent from marketing blogging to bring to you the news that the last floppy disk manufacturer will cease production in March next year.

The elder generation which apparently I am now joining will no doubt remember using 3.5″ floppy disks for office docs, projects etc on a day to day basis. Before CD drives ever existed and really before the internet really got going, floppy disks were the most secure way of transferring documents from one place to another.

Anyone who has depended on floppy disks though will know that the level of security was minuscule. They were about as dependable as Liverpool to win the league – would be working fine but then for no reason simply implode due to a lack of quality!

Sony broke the news this week that they would stop production of the floppy disk in 2011. It seems up til now, India and Japan still had a use for this ‘beta max’ storage device. Sony reports selling 12m in 2009 alone. This means they probably sold 3m and they 9m replacements!

Anyway R.I.P. floppy disk, I won’t really miss you but appreciate your effort!