innovation [in-uh-vey-shuhn] –noun
1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum. 2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Innovation. Innovate. Innovators. Words that, in the Mobile Industry, get tossed around more than a football on a Sunday afternoon.
You hardly get into the second line of any press release or company bio without them popping up - ironically most of these companies were founded less than two years ago and are nothing more than "Mobile Rookies" on the fast track to losing vast sums of investor money. I'm not saying these companies aren't building good apps. What I AM saying is that they don't have an innovative bone in their body, and the fact they choose to claim to the contrary bugs the crap out of me (if I can be so blunt).
It's certainly one thing to "claim" to be an innovator, in fact, it's very easy to pad your ego, or your company's bio by peppering in different variations of the word. It's an entirely different thing altogether to actually INNOVATE, and I think the companies that do the most of it, probably use the word the least. When it comes to Mobile Apps and the companies that build them, the use of the word has gotten completely out of control. We now see companies that are releasing variations of applications we had built back in 2004 spout off about how innovative their "new" app is. Some companies go as far as to literally knock off our entire product catalog, and all the while have the audacity to claim innovation (yes, you know who you are - and there's quite a lot of you out there!). There are however real innovators out there, and no, not just Killer Mobile ®.
One such company is Lonely Cat Games. Lonely Cat Games has amazed me since 2004 with their ability to create Mobile App Blockbusters. UltraMP3 & ProfiMail are two such innovations. They took two of the most basic & mundane smart phone functions and created a third party application that not only made you want to use their app, but PAY for it as well. True innovators that can rightly claim to be.
Killer Mobile ® is another REAL Innovator, and although we may not brag about it often (we're quite modest), we do have the history to back it up.
- AutoPilot | Our first application, released in late 2003, due to slow execution was actually the second such app released on the market (as tough as that was to swallow), however we were the true originators of the concept of an on-mobile answering machine application that allowed the user to setup personalized greetings for every call (One for your wife, another for your girlfriend!)
- BlackBaller | Released in 2004 was the first and ORIGINAL Call & SMS filtering application plus SMS Auto Reply (yes, we know, it took us forever to get our BlackBerry & Android versions released). The Smart Reject Sensor feature was also a Killer Mobile ® innovation
- SpyCall (now called Total Recall and downloaded over 4 million times) | Released in 2004 was the first S60 Call Recorder to hit the market
- Calling Card (now called Dialer-X | Released in 2005 was the first S60/Symbian Automatic Calling Card Dialer
- In 2006 released our first and only, super quirky consumer Java app called "Save Jimmy!" - the mobile industry's first contraception application for men
- In 2008 Killer Mobile ® was registered as an official trademark in the U.S.
- AdvanceSMS | Released in 2009 was the first app of it's kind to offer personalized SMS tones for every contact
Not a bad list of firsts for a small, seven-year old company based out of the "Great Northwest". This doesn't include many of our other behind the scenes innovations such as cutting edge beep suppression in Total Recall, security features such as the "Call Me" feature in SecureMe, and many others. And we're not done innovating. AmigoTones (tm), a top secret project currently underway in the Killer Mobile ® Labs is set to be one more of the industry firsts under our belt. So while it's easy to copy the Killer Mobile ® playbook, true innovation is something our competitors will never be able to copy. As always, Stay Killer My Friends.
Chief Killer
