It is super popular. unlike a number of other VOIP solutions, only skype has has widely distributed, consumer level hardware support - ie, there are a number of handsets that look like ordinary phones/cellular phones on the market that use Skype. Here is one:
Skype was not even close to the first VOIP product to market. Other software packages had plenty of time to mature for years on the market before skype came along.
Does it offer a feature set or ease of use that wa lacking in other VOIP solutions?
I use it: we have relatives living abroad (both my husband and I). They have computers and fast internet connection. Why pay for phone calls when Skype is free, easy to use and it sounds even better than line connections?
I also have Skypeout and get super-duper cheap rates on international calls, which I do frequently because of professional and personal needs. For example, I bought 10 USD worth of minutes about 7 months ago. I’ve spent hours on the (Skype) phone and I still have over $5 left. I also have Skypein, for which I pay around 35 USD per year, and which gives me a local US telephone number, which my customers can call and pay less.
I have a cordless Skype phone with a color screen, pretty nifty.
I only use it to talk to my boyfriend in the States, and I use it because it’s free and it’s the only chat program we could find that worked well between his Linux and my Windows.
Skype offered a very convenient user interface that was easy and simple to use. It was geared toward voice calls and gave very good quality audio. They expanded to allow computer to regular landline as well as landline to computer calling. As well, their software was very good at getting around firewalls.
The competition such as MSN was geared toward chat first, voice second.
MSN’s voice service was there as an extension of the Microsoft operating system. It was there to give another reason to buy the Microsoft OS. Whereas Skype had no such requirement, it was freer to experiment and try new things. It was very aggressive at developing relationships with hardware suppliers to provide corded and cordless phones that attach to the computer. Now there are Skype products being sold by Netgear, Philips and LinkSys that have Skype embedded into the base unit and don’t require a computer.
Skype was agile, had a strong vision and a good product.
I believe so, which likely reduced their hardware costs.
I think the biggest factor of their success, though, was that it just worked on most hardware and networks. A lot of the competitors (including one I worked for) had trouble making client software that ran well on a variety of hardware and successfully went through firewalls and such.
I think Skype was just at the right place at the right time. Just like a lot of other things that wind up popular - for example the iPod which has been pretty much trailing the industry in feature/$ and number of features from the get-go but the slickness of the interface, aggressive marketing and excellent support from Apple pretty much established it as ‘the music player’. Most people think that every feature of the iPod is innovative, that it in itself is an ‘invention’ and not just a mature product, and all that Jazz. Same thing with Skype - it seems new, it seems inventive, it seems polished and it’s really none of these things but who cares – somebody would have to fill the niche, why not Skype?