killer app

1 definition found

killer app - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  killer app
  
  
     The application that actually makes a sustaining market for a
     promising but under-utilized technology. First used in the mid-1980s
     to describe Lotus 1-2-3 once it became evident that demand for that
     product had been the major driver of the early business market for
  IBM
     PCs. The term was then retrospectively applied to VisiCalc, which had
     played a similar role in the success of the Apple II. After 1994 it
     became commonplace to describe the World Wide Web as the Internet's
     killer app. One of the standard questions asked about each new
     personal-computer technology as it emerges has become "what's the
     killer app?"