Killer Applications - Killer Apps That Weren't, The Death Of Killer Apps?

Having risen to prominence in the mid-1990s alongside the start of the Internet boom, "killer applications" (or "killer apps") is industry jargon for compelling uses for a technology. Technology developers and industry watchers deem an application "killer" when it drives high sales and wide adoption, possibly even creating whole new markets, paradigms, and categories of technology. In this sense, e-mail is commonly seen as one of the founding killer apps of the Internet because its speed, ease of use, and asynchronous nature appeal to everyone from scientists to high-school kids. The same could be said of graphical Web browsers. By contrast, technologies are often said to fail when they lack a killer app.

Yet part of the glory of a killer app is not simply wild success at the cash register, but relates to having a clearly defined, even narrow, purpose that makes the technology essential for a group of users, not just nice to have. So Internet, and especially Web, access became the killer apps of PC dial-up modems, even while the devices could also be used for peer networking with other PCs or for dialing into electronic bulletin board systems. Internet access became the defining use and made modems standard equipment on many PCs. However, the case isn't as clear with high-speed services like cable Internet and DSL. Certainly, these are also used for the same purposes as dial-up modems. But as yet, there's been no single, noteworthy use that distinguishes high-speed services, other than perhaps a vague notion of large file transfers for musical recordings, media clips, and so on. Thus everything tends to be faster, but for users sending e-mail and doing light Web browsing, the difference may be negligible. For many users in the early 2000s, at least, these benefits were only a moderate convenience relative to their costs.

Because having a killer app translates into having potential for brisk sales, technology analysts and strategists frequently speak of "the next killer app." At times the discussion is framed as a search to identify the next big application in a certain area of technology. An analyst, for instance, might lay out a description of the important technical features of a new piece of technology—say, wireless Internet access—and suggest what features have the most revolutionary potential for new applications. Other observers take more of a determinist view, naming the exact technology and perhaps forecasting how successful it will be in monetary terms. Of course, these predictions don't always pan out; unified messaging, or bringing together voice, e-mail, and fax capabilities, is one concept that has regularly been heralded as a killer app for various software and service providers, but one which has usually disappointed its advocates.