Google's brand is stronger than Motorola's. Stronger than Dell's. HTC? Who is HTC? Google should be addressing their own brand and its image in the mobile space. We should see a real Google Phone. Not an HTC phone sold on Google.com. Damn, many of the hack Photoshop jobs of fake Google Phones looked better than what HTC just announced.

Android is quickly turning into a completely undefined non-brand which will not have any value except as an easy implementation to the myriad of handset makers that choose to compile and distribute it.

Google will of course continue to pull value from its investment in the form of advertising and other revenue streams, some of which probably have yet to be conceived or at least implemented. However, I don't think "Android" as it stands has any type of "pull" factor at all when it comes to the marketplace. People are going to buy the current crop of Andoird phones because of the way they look, the companies producing them if they know them and based on how strongly the service provider pushes them into their plans and advertising. Those sales however will not aid in building Google's own brand nor will they create significant mind-share for Android the same way Google could on their own. At least as the face, obviously delegating actual manufacturing to an OEM like Apple and RIM do.

Bottom line is that Android is heavily segmented and no one product or even product line is going to come close to matching RIM and Apple. We might even see the full sum of Android products showing lower numbers. Product segmentation helped put WinMo into the position it's in now. It was easy for RIM and Apple to come in and eat MS' lunch.