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?"

[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {app}{Internet}]