Dutch company SPRXmobile has launched Layar – “the world’s first mobile Augmented Reality browser”, as they call it – for Android. However, Nokia has a similar concept, Point & Find, that we first reported on Threeminds in last December, which is now available for download (in beta) in the US and UK.

The basic concept of both Layar, Point & Find, and Wikitude, another AR “browser” for the Android OS, is this: point your phone’s camera at the real life view around you. The software then aggregates the data from the phone’s compass and GPS coordinates to understand where you’re standing and what you’re looking at, and applies a visual information layer on top of the camera display. Layar has a few content partnerships incl. a bank, a social networking site, and a realty company which allows Layar to identify houses for sale. Nokia’s Point & Find seems to focus on movies right now, allowing the user to point the camera at a movie poster and watch the trailer, check show times and read reviews. Wikitude uses Wikipedia to pull in travel information.

Layar will be available this month in The Netherlands via the Android Market, and launch later this year in the US, Germany and the UK.

UPDATE: Looks like Nokia Point & Find includes something even cooler that I forgot to mention earlier: the Nokia Point & Find Management Portal. It’s an editor that lets users create their own mobile AR experiences. According to Nokia BetaLabs, the Camden Crawl music festival in London has already done so. I haven’t had time to test the Portal myself yet, but if it actually works well, this is pretty great. Watch this video that introduces the Portal.

Karri Ojanen