The Skype Journal was musing about the question again on the success or lack thereof for Skype phone accessories. There is a lot that can be said about that. My core perspective is as a product designer and marketer. Where product design and marketing messages don’t deliver effectively, failure is a likely outcome. The brilliance of Skype is that it is a platform. Skype gets this on some levels, but has not comprehended the kind of product magic as recently seen in the iPhone. Apple has a great culture to drive and support this kind of innovation, but that is no reason to throw up your hands and give-up without that underpinning.
I own a few of these Skype accessories. While all are first generation products, including the TeleVoce-Connected designs, most designs are significantly constrained. During the Internet bubble when VoIP was just taking off, it was widely recognized that to be successful new end-user behavior was undesirable. This should be fairly obvious that to reach a wide audience operating transparency should be critical, but Skype has not really embraced this.
Broadband solutions, such as Vonage, all work to replicate a phone experience. Skype would like to stand apart, which is understandable, but forcing new behaviors on simple use cases will not help the cause of market penetration. The devices I have tested tend to take over the audio system, which is undesirable for PC operation. First I can no longer use Skype on a headset or mic/spkr when most phones are installed. If I am introduced to Skype on a headset, then I am whisked to a new/old habit. Why can’t I still use the headset as I did before? Further, why should some installs take away all the audio sounds that I get during normal PC operation?
It seems to me that these products cannot be well integrated with user’s ongoing behavior as may evolve naturally. Instead they force a new expectation that I as the user must adapt to. I would suspect that many of these products were banished to the closet when they started interfering with other habits. Obviously, a few have enjoyed the transition to a new experience, but this market would be better served if that was an option and not forced. Until then I believe we are constrained to a geek-only saturated market—and well-stocked closets.