The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM

Sony has signalled what could be the final end of the venerable floppy disk.

The electronics giant has said it will stop selling the 30-year-old storage media in Japan from March 2011.

Earlier this year Sony stopped selling the disks in most international markets due to dwindling demand and competition from other storage formats.

The slow death of the "floppy" or "diskette" began in 1998 when Apple decided not to include a floppy drive in its G3 iMac computer.

Since then various other firms have stopped support for floppy disks on the majority of machines, including computer giant Dell in 2003.

Computing store PC World said that it would stop selling them in 2007 when stocks ran out.

However, Sony has continued to sell the disks, and continues to ship them in the millions.

Now, the firm - which claims to have produced the first 3.5in (9cm) disks in 1981 - has decided to halt sales completely faced with competition from online storage and portable USB drives.