Everyone must have come across photographers at the Gateway of India or any other monument in the country, roaming around with a camera that delivers an instant colored image on a white square of plastic.

Those instant cameras will soon become relics of the past thanks to Polaroid (pioneers of instant image technology) having decided to put a full stop to making of instant film. The company has decided to cease production completely in 2009.

Polaroid has decided to close down its factories in Massachusetts (USA), Mexico, and the Netherlands since they now plan to focus on other ventures such as portable printers for mobile phone images, Polaroid-branded digital cameras, digital cameras, televisions, and DVD players.

According to Tom Beaudoin, president, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer of Polaroid, they've decided to discontinue the making of instant film as they want to reinvent Polaroid so that it lives on for the next 30 to 40 years.

Incidentally, the first instant camera was introduced in 1948 in the US, but is now obsolete. The company stopped making these instant cameras about a year ago.

Meanwhile, the death of Polaroid's instant photography technology hasn't come as quite the shocker -- at least for those familiar with digital cameras and postage-sized memory cards.

Polaroid had failed to embrace digital technology that has transformed photography, instead sticking to its belief that many photographers who didn't want to wait to get pictures developed would hold onto their cameras, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Also, global sales of traditional camera film have been dropping about 25-30 percent every year and so is it with instant film.