Polaroid is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film. It became obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs.

The firm is closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands and cutting 450 jobs as the brand synonymous with instant images focuses on ventures such as portable printers for images from mobile phones and digital cameras, televisions and DVD players. The company stopped making instant cameras over the past two years and is now trying to reinvent Polaroid so it lives on for the next 30 to 40 years.

Polaroid failed to embrace the digital technology that has transformed photography, instead sticking to its belief that many photographers who did not want to wait to get pictures developed would hold on to their old Polaroid cameras.
Global sales of traditional camera film have been dropping about 25% to 30% per year and instant film has been falling as fast if not faster.

Polaroid got its start making polarised sunglasses in the 1930s and introduced its first instant camera in 1948. Film packs contained the chemicals for developing images inside the camera, and photos emerged from the camera in less than a minute.
Polaroid’s overall revenue from instant cameras, film and other products peaked in 1991. The company went bankrupt in 2001 and was bought four years later by Minnetonka, Minneapolis-based consumer products company Petters Group Worldwide.