The USB flash drive is "dying", says inventor of product

"Connected world" negates need for portable storage, claims Dov Moran

Dov Moran, the inventor credited with the creation of the USB flash drive, has declared that his product is "dying", as the world speeds towards complete cloud connectivity.

"This product is going to die. It's dying, actually," Moran told Computing.

"I'm very surprised it's still going, because basically everything is connected today. Homes, tablets, computers – many, many other things are going to be connected as well in the future. It's a connected world, and that's not going to need a flash drive."

Moran did however disclose that he was recently speaking to a flash drive company acquired by industry leader SanDisk – which also acquired Moran's own company in 2006 for $1.6bn (£1.04bn) – who informed him that 2012 had, paradoxically, been a record year for USB stick sales.

"I said, ‘Why? Where?'," Moran said. "He said South America. So now it's only just getting to South America, which is quite amazing."

But the developing world aside, Moran is bidding farewell to the humble USB stick. He does not even see a future for higher capacity, less pocket-sized solid state drives that are beginning to hold several terabytes of data for affordable prices. But Moran says the passing of the USB drive does not made him sad; he's already working on his next venture to join the completely connected world he envisions.

As CEO of smart TV solution firm Comigo, which has already got a range of Android-based smart TV boxes out of the door, Moran believes the future of television lies inherently in interconnectedness of interactive hardware and software elements.

"Comigo is the new thing, and many people may not understand what we're doing, but we have a concept of interaction that relates to the programmes you see or are watching," said Moran.

"But people ask why should I have applications that match to the football game or to The Voice, or anything I watch? What I say is if you look at the iPhone many years ago, if people told you that before its launch that it was going to come with a market for applications, that would sound very strange. You would ask, ‘Why have a market for applications for a phone?'. They'd expect it to come with every application it needed already."

Moran's business plan is to include interactive UI overlays over programmes, as well as interfacing with tablets and mobile devices to improve the effectiveness of a television to serve as an entertainment and productivity hub in the home.

"In the future everybody will have a TV screen in every room," said Moran, before adding: "We believe that Android will be very important to future television platforms."