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Can somebody please tell me why I should want an IP video phone on my desk? Or even in my home?I recently met a very nice young woman who represents a company called ACN. She very much wants to show me ACN’s video phone product, and I would like to see it, more out of curiosity than out of need. For the last several days I have been racking my brain trying to figure out whether this is a product more suitable to home or business, and the conclusion I keep reaching is that it isn’t particularly useful or suitable for either.
Video phones are not new; the Bell Telephone system tried as early as the mid-1950’s to drum up consumer interest, although the technology could not have supported any real demand. But that was to be used over the classic telephone land line. Today we have VoIP telephone service over broadband Internet, and the new phones take advantage of all that extra bandwidth to make Video Phones much more practical. But there is a difference between being technologically practical and being a practical technology.
Right now, if you hook up an IP Video phone, most of your conversations will be with people who don’t have one, so all you’ve got then is an ordinary VoIP phone with useless video monitor. So as a consumer, I don’t see video phones gaining much traction. But let’s suppose they do. Do I really want everyone who calls me to be able to see me in my pajamas? Or more importantly, do I want to see them in theirs? And if the conversation is with someone I’d really just as soon blow off ASAP, doesn’t the addition of video convey that much more quickly and bluntly than is good for long term social relations?
So it seems to me that the Video Phone market is not the household, but the office. I can imagine several of my clients installing these devices on every desktop, so whenever you have to call Joe in shipping or Mandy in accounting, you have a face-2-face without even leaving your chair. Is this a good thing?
Well, it depends on what else you can do. If you have available any of the nifty new collaboration tools and you are holding your conversation both on the phone and on your desktop computer, this is a lot more convenient than schlepping around a folder full of physical spreadsheets and other documents, dumping them on a conference table, and trying to have a meaningful conversation. It is widely believed that body language and facial queues play an important part in communication, and if these can be observed when the parties are not in close proximity, that’s probably a big plus. I’ve had video conferences without collaboration tools, and I’ve had non-video conferences with collaboration tools. I could have done without the video, but the collaboration was a definite plus.
In short, a video phone might be a great conversation piece when someone visits your office, but I don’t see it contributing that much to a phone conversation. If you have a different opinion, please enlighten me.
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