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

Video of the presentation by Claire Boonstra, co-founder & head of content & community, at the Layar NEXT Event, June 18th 2010. She talks about the milestones the Layar community has reached and the news big content partners like National Geographic and Quiznos.

Layer Partner Network member TAB World Media also took the stage as well as DnL Productions to talk about their successful business using Layar.

Layar Platform grows to 1.000 layers published, covering every country in the world
This week Layar reached three major milestones: 1.000 layers published, 3.000 layers in testing and 4.000 active developers. The platform growth has now accelerated to over 20% per month. These layers bring augmented content to every country in the world.

The Layar Partner Network, consisting of companies fully dedicated to developing layers, has grown to 20 members across the globe. The newest member, Dongyub Lee of DnL Productions in South-Korea explained on stage why his company chose to be fully committed to Layar with 4 dedicated developers and 3D artists.

The latest brand to announce their commitment to use Layar’s AR is National Geographic. At the event, Katie Juhl, Manager of Mobile at National Geographic shared how they will use Layar to provide better learning and travel experiences for their audience.

Katie Juhl, Manager of Mobile at National Geographic on using Layar to provide better learning experiences

Dirk Groten, CTO of Layar shared current and new features to create immersive Augmented Reality using the Layar API. This third event video from the 1 year anniversary event is especially interesting for publishers and game designers who are gearing up to explore the emerging mass medium of augmented reality.

In this presentation Dirk also explained what effect the operator campaigns with Layar using TV ads during prime time shows in the US had on the servers.

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.