Product Life Cycle (PLC)

Floppy Disk
A floppy disk is a magnetic storage medium for computer system. The floppy disk is composed
of a thin, flexible magnetic disk sealed in a square plastic carrier. In order to read and write data
from a floppy disk, a computer system must have floppy disk drive (FDD). A floppy disk is also
referred to simply as a floppy. Since the early days of personal computing, floppy disks were
widely used to distribute to software, transfer files, and create back-up copies of data. When
hard drives were still very expensive, floppy disks were also used to store the operating system
of a computer.
A number of different types of floppy disks have been developed. The size of the floppy got
smaller, and the storage capacity increased. However, in the 1990s, other media, including hard
disk drives, ZIP drives, optical drives, and USB flash drives, started to replace floppy disks as the
primary storage medium.

Introduction:
Floppy disk brought a revolution to the computer industry in the late 1960’s. The floppy disk
was first created in 1967 by IBM as an alternative to buying hard drives, which were extremely
expensive at the time. It was commercially introduced in the year 1971 and became a major
success as it was the only solution to the data transfer. It introduced after the computerization
of everything around us. It was meant to store or transfer data from one computer to another.

Growth:
Floppy disks were majority used in the years 1980’s- 1990’s in its use with personal computers
to distribute software, transfer data, and create backups. Before hard disks became affordable
to the general people, floppy disk were often used to store a computers operating system (OS).
Most home computers from that period have an elementary OS and BASIC stored in ROM, with
the option of loading a more advanced operating system from a floppy disk. As the years passed
it improved its design and also maximized its storage capacity.
Maturity:
It was very much in the market throughout the 80’s and 90’s. Its maximum storage space was
200 MB. By the early 1996s, the increasing software size meant large packages like Windows or
Adobe Photoshop required a dozen disks or more. In 1996, there were an estimated five billion
standard floppy disks in use.

Decline:
The product faced a major decline after the advent of better innovation in the market. The
computer produced did not support floppy disk. There were better alternatives such as USB
cards, CD’s , external hard disks and pendrives. In 2009 Hewlett-Packard stopped making floppy
disks completely which was stopped by Dell earlier in 2003.

Figure: Product life cycle of floppy disk

For more than two decades, the floppy disk was the primary external writable storage device
used. Most computing environments before the 1990s were non-networked, and floppy disk
were the primary means of transferring data between computers, a method known informally
as Sneakernet. Unlike hard disks, floppy disks are handled and seen; even a notice user can
identify a floppy disk. The floppy disk symbol is still used by software on user interface elements
related to saving files, such as the release of Microsoft Office 2016, even though the physical
floppy disks are largely obsolete.