People Say: Is a unified Android OS a good thing?

Google unleashed Android 3.1 OS for tablets recently, but the buzzer news is that come its next release, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich and landing this year, the company is putting a fork in “forked” versions of Android. Is one Android for all only good news?

For better understanding this questionI have chosen the most valuable and interesting quotes from LI members:

«For developers, yes. If you compare Android to iOS you can see the problems that a fragmented versioning causes. Developers writing for iOS still have the option to bring out different versions for tablets and phones or can write one app covering all devices. With Android much more effort is involved to create versions running across all flavors.
There is a lot of consumer confusion in the marketplace at present. I am in the IT industry myself – I was researching a new Android phone for the wife recently and was not sure of the different versions of Android out there, which I should go for and why. The obvious choice would be ‘newest is best’, but without significant research it is unclear what the benefits (or drawbacks) are between versions.
A lot of people hate the stranglehold that Apple place on industry ‘partners’ but from a consumer perspective they deliver a much more stable, streamlined and easy to understand system. By standardizing the OS across all Android devices Google will be much better placed to compete on an even level.»
Martin Bailey
General Manager, JETCAM/ Marketing Manager at 123insight

«Yes, for developers and for consumer. The success factor for Android is that it’s an open platform where people are free to choose what to install or develop etc. But the fragmentation can broke this critical advantage so iOS could win.»
Ruggero Piccoli
Excel Business Intelligence

«Depends.
The fragmentation problem that exists currently it’s not only Google’s fault. If equipment manufacturer’s (HTC , Samsung,Etc..) provided updates in a regular basis the fragmentation problem would be almost nonexistent. Since that doesn’t happens because it would probably reduce the profit on phone sales, we consumers and developers have this problem that makes customers spend more money on phones and developers put more effort in app development. Having all this in mind developing for android becomes more costly and a less attractive than Apple’s platform. So although we’ll have a android version that is the same for phones and tablets, it won’t reach all or most of all android customers out there.»
Carlos Ferreira
Junior Software Developer at ITSector

«Absolutely yes. Look at it like this, is an unified Windows OS a good thing or would you rather be riding the Linux horse to fight the desktop war?»
Fernando Giannaccari Nunes
Services Intake Manager at Dell

What do you think? Your opinions are welcome!