Reconsidering the IP PhoneReconsidering the IP Phone

When it came to transforming the phone with IP, vendors were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

Dave Michels of Pin Drop Soup has a new feature in which he predicts that 2008 will be the year that IP desk phone sales will peak. Whether you agree or disagree, I don't know many people who think that the vendors made the most of the opportunities to break the mold when phones transitioned from digital to IP. I argued as much in an earlier VoiceCon eNews, also in response to one of Dave's features.And yet, as I think about it, I'm not sure you can lay all the blame at the vendors' feet. In a lot of ways, they were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

For example: Hold buttons. Allan Sulkin wasn't the only person who got on Cisco's case for not having a Hold button on their early-generation IP phones. Cisco even caught flak when they did put Hold buttons on the phones but didn't make them red. There was a story at the time about an office manager at a law firm taking her red fingernail polish and painting all of the Hold buttons on the office's new Cisco phones.

Vendors got slammed when they didn't make the new phones look like what people thought phones were supposed to look like. For Cisco, it was an especially touchy issue, because they were trying to convince a skeptical market that voice over IP sounded and worked just as good as TDM. Having the phone look basically the same allowed them (and, eventually, their competitors) to convey the message that you weren't losing any functionality or quality with the new technology. But then go and make somebody's Hold button a softkey instead of an angry-red plastic button, or take away their red Call Waiting Indicator light, and all of a sudden you were some kind of wild-eyed radical hippie freak.

Can any old-timers out there tell me why the Hold button on digital phones was red in the first place? Red says Emergency; it says Panic; it says: This is the single most important key on the phone. Putting people on Hold, getting them the hell out of your ear, that was the most important thing? Or was it an artifact of the old-fashioned multi-line phones with a red hold button and a row of line buttons that lit up white? Where the important thing was not putting someone on hold, but being reminded that they were still there?

In today's market, Microsoft has really benefitted from Cisco's trailblazing, as well as from the passage of time. Cisco really did have to convince the market that voice over IP could work (a task made even more difficult by the fact that, often, it didn't). Now that VOIP technology (mostly) works and is (mostly) trusted by end users and telecom/IT managers, Microsoft can credibly make a case for doing things radically differently with your voice capabilities.

Furthermore, in 2000, telephony at the desk phone was unquestionably still the most mission-critical communications medium; in 2009, it has dropped from that status for many users-those who communicate mostly by email, IM, social networking or mobile devices. So not only is Microsoft free to trash the desk phone, they--and every other vendor without an installed base--would be foolish not to.

That installed base is what hems in the Ciscos and Avayas, but I agree with Dave Michels that the market for IP desk phones is going away, albeit slowly. However, in defending the phone, systems vendors weren't necessarily being mulish or foolish; to a certain extent; they were playing the hand they held.When it came to transforming the phone with IP, vendors were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.