It's called usability, Estel. Something that many open-source products lack. Which is the main reason why most people do not use them. You and I may care about function and not care about form, but please wake up. Form is important. Why do you think so many sheeple flock to overpriced Apple products?

BTW, IM and video chat may seem "completely different" to you but for most people - including me - they are just different forms of chat. So it makes sense to bundle them in the same application. Much more so than bundling playing MP3s and videos in one Media Player, or a news reader into an email client, for the matter.

Here are just a few real-life use cases from the recent past. All of them start with, "I am in an IM chat and suddenly..."

• My 4 years old walks into the room and asks, "What are you doing, daddy?". "I am talking to your auntie in Italy." "Can I see her?"
  It's so much easier to click one button and turn on video than asking the other party to start another application they may not even have.
• The other party asks me how to do XYZ. (S)he is not a computer geek and needs showing. So I go, "click this button and I will share my screen with you and show you."
  Oh the number of times I tried setting up X11 screen sharing through SSH on my N900 and failed... and I am a geek. I cannot expect my sister faffing around with VNC, that would be way above her head.

Yes, I know. But, as you have correctly observed, by covering points 1-4 the mysterious client X merely becomes a second Skype. They are not enough an argument to switch: "What's the point, Skype does all that, why should I bother?". You need some unique selling point.

Again, I know. And I even care to some extent. But most people don't even know what a motherboard is. And when you explain it to them, they go, so what? And I must say that at this point, I myself start struggling. I may not like it, but neither can I find any convincing arguments why the average user should care.

So yes, Skype no longer working on my phone is a big deal. Not the end of the world but a major inconvenience.