It’s been just a few days short of two weeks since we started counting down the downloads remaining until we hit 30 million! Today we stand just under 200,000 downloads away and we’re fast approaching the goal.

Be sure to follow our progress as we approach 30 million and share interesting facts and stories “behind the numbers” on Twitter with the hashtag #Layar30M. We’ve already posted a bunch, check out the rundown of what we’ve heard so far down below!

And make sure to keep an eye over at Layar.com/30M to read up on everything we post.

4.4 billion operations!

We do a lot of sending and receiving of data, and lots of requests are made to our back-end database. Just last month, our database process 4.4 BILLION input/output operations. That’s a lot of activity!

Layar tattoos!

One enterprising individual as gone as far as to turn a tattoo into interactive “print” (skin?). This goes to show that Layar isn’t just for magazines, but can be on many flat surfaces, including product packaging! 

It’s more than just print!

People are enhancing more than magazines and business cards. Real estate agency Van Santvoort enhanced the walls of their kiosk with help from Layar partner Limebizz. Check it out on the blog.

Elanders is our partner!

We’ve partnered with Elanders UK, part of a global printing firm with production across 4 continents. Their customers include global brands like Jaguar Land Rover, Tesco and Bosch. Read more on the blog.

LOTS of coffee!

According to the computer living inside of our office coffee machine, we consumed over 12,000 cups of coffee last year! We work hard at making the best interactive print solutions out there.

Read more »

In February, we saw a huge explosion of activity from Thailand as tens of thousands of people used Layar to view and create interactive print.

Take a look at the chart above, which shows growth in several categories from February. Pageviews had a major spike, growing over 3,000% from January, but what caused so many more people to scan interactive print in Thailand?

It seems a rather popular comedian, Udom Taepanich, was at the center of an interactive print campaign advertising his 10th stand-up special, Deaw 10. Follow this link to check out some footage of one of his previous specials (with English subtitles!). Images on ads around Bangkok and on tickets to the event themselves were augmented using Layar to show a video of Udom coming to life out of the ad.

The campaign has a snowball effect in Thailand, as downloads of the Layar App skyrockets by 515% and thousands of new interactive print campaigns have been published. The shows are still being performed, and more and more people are being made aware of interactive print.

This is a great example of how Layar is, and has been, a very international company. Our users and interactive print Creators come from all over the world from a plethora of use cases, and the growth shown in Thailand recently fits right along that trend. In the end, this shows how interactive print is rapidly expanding across the globe.

Today in Amsterdam, we’re hosting our “Activeer Print” (Activate Print) seminar, which we invited members of the media and publishing industries to learn all about Layar and interactive print.

Our CEO, Quintin Schevernels shared some interesting new bits of data today with the audience in Amsterdam. We’ve been using Distimo Monitor to review our stats, and today we’ve got some exciting stats to share here on the blog as well.

Averaging 1M Downloads Each Month

Layar now averages roughly 1 million downloads of the Layar App for iPhone and Android each month. This is a significant leap from the first quarter of 2012, when Layar downloads averaged around 500k each month.

This increase in downloads parallels several new Interactive Print campaigns in recent months and the launch of the Layar Creator in June. More people are now downloading Layar to interact with their print products.

In our Layar whitepaper, released in May, we mentioned having just over 20 million total downloads all-time for Layar. Later this week, we will surpass 23 million downloads.

Layar Creator Takes Off!

It’s been just over a month since we launched the Layar Creator publicly, and so far we’ve been thrilled with the reception and usage.

To date, over 8,400 editors have started using the Creator, publishing over 4,500 campaigns of interactive print. That’s equal to roughly 125 new published campaigns every day.

Spreading Across the Globe

Traditionally, we’ve seen Layar’s popularity centralized around Europe. Our leading country, however, by a wide margin is the United States. The U.S. continually represents over 20% of Layar downloads. 1 of every 5 downloads is from the U.S.

It towers over any other country. In fact, the U.S. accounts for as many downloads as the combined total of the 2nd through 5th ranked countries - Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.

The majority of the remaining top countries, in terms of downloads, are in Europe, but recently we’ve seen new countries in new continents join the fray.

The biggest mover? It might be a surprise: Saudi Arabia. Just a few months ago, Saudi Arabia accounted for less than half of 1% of Layar’s total downloads. With just over 2,000 downloads in January, the Middle Eastern country has grown considerably to nearly 40,000 (over 4.5% of all downloads) in June.

Other countries on the rise include Brazil and Chile - our top South American countries. Each has increased its amount of downloads by 300% over the last six months, helping Brazil move among the top countries worldwide.

We feel this represents a globalization of Layar. It’s not just a European phenomenon anymore. Now, our top countries span the globe, across all continents. Check out the Layar Creator and get started with your campaign today!

We built in some really great stats into the Layar Creator which you can use to analyze your Creator campaigns. You can see views, clicks and users on the campaign, page and button level, and you can even export the data and play with it yourself.

Below is a short video that shows you all of the features found in Creator stats and how to use them. Have a look!