Yeah, I imagine they figured that as long as they kept pushing out updated OS versions, essentially for free, the OEMs would have an easy way to keep offering u

Yeah, I imagine they figured that as long as they kept pushing out updated OS versions, essentially for free, the OEMs would have an easy way to keep offering updates without having to build any of the underlying "stuff" from scratch. But I think it ends up more like enterprise IT where OS updates get put off and only done when absolutely necessary. To OEMs who only really care about selling hardware, it's just more testing, deployment, and support cost (not to mention porting their customizations). I realize I'm not in the majority (outside of tech circles) but I really do like Android and the main criteria for choosing a device are specs, build quality, and likelihood of timely updates. My current phone is a Moto X and it's the first non-Nexus I've had in a while. And I only got that because I broke my Nexus 5 and we were still a way off from a refresh. The Moto seemed like a less extravagant (in terms of price and screen size) version of the Nexus 6. But if Lenovo undoes the good things Google did for Moto, I'll be back to the Nexus line regardless for my next phone. I got rid of the carrier as a middleman by avoiding carrier-branded and subsidized handsets but the OEM still plays a huge part as long as proprietary code is needed to port newer versions of the OS to a given device.