This is the last video of Layar’s one year anniversary event. CEO Raimo van der Klein talks product. He discusses the latest usage statistics, introduces the latest addition to the Layar experience called Floaticons and announces the partnership with Kooaba.

See the whole news round-up from the anniversary event here.

Layar’s usage shows growth and maturity with 700K active users
In the last 6 months 1.6 million people used Layar at least once. The active user base amounts to 716.000 people who used Layar in the past 30 days. The Layar Reality Browser is moving from a cool application to show friends to an application that is a service of value in daily life.

More layers are being discovered with the content discovery mechanism called Stream. The addition of Stream to the Layar Reality Browser resulted in 40% of the users opening at least 3 layers, compared to 23% in previous versions.

Graph: Average amount of Layers opened by users

Layar adds AR messaging with cool 3D Floaticons
Today we announced that our users will be able to express themselves by placing objects in the mass medium of Augmented Reality. The first “species” of objects that come alive in Layar are animated 3D objects called Floaticons. Users express themselves and leave messages using Floaticons.

There are several series, such as Floatos Locos, Robots 3000, Classic Monsters, Sparkle & Shine and a special World Cup series representing all participating countries. Hundreds of these Floaticons will be made available for all types of messages.

To ensure that only relevant messages remain visible over time, we gave each Floaticon a limited lifespan, indicated as “health”. The health of a Floaticon can be prolonged by feeding it a cookie.

Floaticons are Layar’s first step into the business of Digital Goods. Next week we will make a beta client available to our developers. We expect to launch Floaticons to the public in July.

Introducing Layar Floaticons

Messaging with Layar Floaticons

Layar Floaticon Series

Kooaba announced as partner in Image Recognition
Image Recognition is a key part of the Augmented Reality roadmap. Layar will integrate the world of geo-located AR and image recognition into one compelling service.

Kooaba, a leading company in visual search, based in Zurich, Switzerland, will provide the technology. This capabitity opens up a world of new possibilities, including indoor usage and launching AR from a billboard, video or product. Expected launch is scheduled for Q4 2010.

Announcement video Kooaba

This is the second in the series of presentation videos from the 1 year anniversary event “Layar NEXT. This is “The Attraction of the Experience” by Matt Miesnieks, Head of Customer Development, he shares the latest details around distribution and pre-installation deals.

Below the video the extract, key the slideshare of the presentation and the video of Samsung explaining the attractiveness of Layar.

Layar signs deals to be distributed on 1 in 3 new AR capable smartphones worldwide
Layar has captured the imagination of Smartphone manufacturers and carriers who are attracted to the Layar experience, which demonstrates to customers the full capabilities of modern smartphones. We have been thrilled at the pre-load commitments and above the line marketing investment we are receiving from our partners.

With pride Layar announced that LG, the worlds #3 mobile phone manufacturer will pre-load Layar on new Android devices. In addition, Samsung expanded the existing relationship with support for Layar on the Bada platform. A Tier 1 Chinese handset manufacturer has also signed a global distribution deal to pre-load Layar, along with TCT Mobile (Alcatel). These four partnerships ensure Layar will be pre-loaded on 1 in 3 new AR capable smartphones sold worldwide this year, and more global distribution partnerships will be announced in the coming months.

Verizon, Sprint and Samsung have all invested significantly in producing amazing campaigns to promote Layar. Highlights are the TV commercials aired during prime-time shows such as Oprah and the NBA Finals. Our partners have experienced wildly successful sales campaigns themselves while driving record numbers of active users to Layar.

Our efforts to build the largest audience for publishers of engaging AR experiences are succeeding with tens of millions of users expected on the Layar platform during 2010.

Last week Layar celebrated its 1 year anniversary with the NEXT Event in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with fans, friends, developers, partners and VC’s. It was a great experience and lost of news and announcements were shared. See the whole overview in text here.

This is the first in the series of presentation videos from the Event: “The Who and the What”, Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Co-founder and General Manager, introduces the event, the employees and goes through all that happened the past year.

Coming Friday it’s time to celebrate Layar’s first anniversary with the NEXT Event in de Rode Hoed , Amsterdam. Prepare yourself for an afternoon of inspiring talks and presentations about what’s next for Layar. We will have some nice announcements, and we will reveal parts of our future plans.

At this moment there are still some spots left, so you better be quick and reserve a seat right now if you haven’t done so already. If you can’t attend this event, don’t worry. We will set-up a live stream, which can be watched from our website: layar.com/next

For those who will attend please make sure you’re in the right place on the right time with a fully charged laptop, phone and enough business cards. We arranged good WIFI and extra power strips for those who can’t live with the fact that they’re not able to communicate with the outside world.

The program

15.15 Doors open 16.00 First Part 16.50 Break 17.20 Second Part* 19.00 Drinks and snacks 20.30 End

* Surprise!!!!

Everyone from Layar will be there. We are all looking forward to share the passion, talk AR and connect. See you all this Friday from 15:15 onwards.

The day after our Layar NEXT event on June 18th, we will host a Layar Developer Day at our office, route description. In the morning, we will discuss and explain new Layar features in detail. Developers will be given the opportunity to share lessons learned, tips and tricks and give feedback and ideas to the Layar team and other participants. In the afternoon, the Dutch National football team will play a WorldCup match against Japan. We will arrange a big screen so that you can either watch the match or do more socialising, coding, exchanging ideas etc.

You must be a Layar Developer (in possession of a developer key) to attend this event. Of course, new and inexperienced developers are more than welcome to join. The event is for free, including drinks and lunch.

>> Sign-up now

Program for the 19th of June:

• 10.00 Opening by Maurice Groenhart, Community Manager


• 10.15 Startup sessions
  
  
  
  • C2K: How to build a great layer
  
  
  • Hoppala: 3D and web-services
  
  
  • TAB Worldmedia: PorPois
  
  
  
  


• 12.00 New API by Dirk Groten, CTO


• 12.30 Lunchbreak


• 13.00 Round table discussion - Impact of the new API


• 14.00 End and time for soccer and drinks

See you on the 19th of June.