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PC-based VoIP services like Skype and Google Talk are just too complicated to really make it with the non-geek crowd. That's the gist of a new research report from Forrester Research, anyway.
Forrester analyst Zayera Khan says most European VoIPers use IM-based services (also called VoIM) to make VoIP calls. So the Forrester report takes a look at the top five VoIM services in Europe--Google Talk, ICQ, Microsoft MSN Messenger, Skype, and Yahoo! Messenger.
Khan came away believing that until these services become easier to install and operate, they won't attract large crowds of users. Specifically, Khan says, poeple find the menu categories and descriptions in the VoIM services confusing, and interactive elements such as icons, graphics, buttons, rollovers, navigation menus non-intuitive.
The report suggests that the usablity problems explain why only about 4 percent of connected Europeans use VoIP services for some or all of their private calls. Another group of about the same size tried VoIP service, but eventually gave up on it. Forrester says the numbers aren't that much better in North America, where only about five percent of connected households use PC-to-PC VoIP, and only one percent use PC-to-regular-phone-line VoIP (i.e. the SkypeOut service).
Of the ones studied, Kahn says Microsoft's MSN Messenger did the most to make its app more user friendly, while ICQ did the least. "ICQ seems to simply not want to appeal to mainstream consumers and stick to its young audience with its street language and cutesy images," Kahn writes.
VoIP's usability issues may tie into a larger behavioral one. "Most consumers just don't want to talk through their computer," says Forrester's North America VOIP analyst, Susan Cohen. "There are a lot of entrenched expectations in the consumer psyche about voice, like being able to use a handset."
It's pretty likely that voice service will move over to IP in a big way only when the transformation is completely or nearly completely invisible to the user.
U.S. cable companies understand this; in fact, the cable companies don't even call it VoIP, but rather "digital phone service."
Cohen points out that cable VoIP uses regular phones that often plug into wall jacks, and that cable crews come out and do the installations. Cable VoIP also doesn't pack in a lot of fancy "enhanced voice" features, but rather mimics the circuit-switched phone service people are used to.
As a result, cable companies have been selling VOIP like crazy over the past 18 months. North American cable companies said at the end of January that they'd signed up more than 4 million VoIP subscribers and will add at least 7 million more subscribers by the end of 2008.
Telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon aren't yet selling VoIP service aggressively; they'd like to keep their customers on the more profitable circuit-switched service for as long as possible. The telcos will eventually be pushed into VoIP by the competition, however; when that time comes, the telcos will likely use the same "simple and transparent" approach used by the cable companies.

Pure-play VoIP services like Vonage and SunRocket, Cohen says, are a bit more appealing to mainstream users because they at least allow the use of regular telephones. Some assembley is required, however; the user must tackle the job of installing software and connecting the phone to the computer via an analog telephony adapter (ATA).

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