The first USB flash drive was manufactured in early 2000 by a company called Trek with product Thumbkey®, shortly followed by M-systems (now SanDisk) with their DiskonKey® drive.
Many companies claim to have been first to develop the USB Flash drive which resulted in many patent disputes over the years.
With time USB flash drives have taken on other forms than the classic memory stick and have been integrated into USB pens and USB mouse or have been integrated into creative casings of customised USB drives.
Adoption is widespread as the cost for USB drives has dramatically decreased and are now a very cost effective way to easily store and transport data files. These data files can be of any sort ranging from simple text to audio over to picture and video files.
USB Flash drives, also known as USB pen drives and Memory sticks are increasingly common in the world and the digital storage device of choice.
