Yes, it does. "Arms merchants" like Qualcomm, TI and NVIDIA are more than just "shovel salesmen". Among other things, they're the ones who do the first ports of

Yes, it does. "Arms merchants" like Qualcomm, TI and NVIDIA are more than just "shovel salesmen". Among other things, they're the ones who do the first ports of Android to their chipsets. I don't remember where I read this, but they compete just as much as the phone manufacturers do to make it into "Nexus / Google Experience" devices. One of the big reasons profitability matters is because it drives future investment. To the extent that component manufacturers are making money porting Android to their components and selling the combination, they're going to keep investing, even if their downstream customers are locked in a brutal price war.