It depends, most of the hardware is not manufactured by Google (even thus it's sold in Google's name) So for example, Samsung, etc, (but mostly Samsung here) s

It depends, most of the hardware is not manufactured by Google (even thus it's sold in Google's name) So for example, Samsung, etc, (but mostly Samsung here) see a benefit in having the hardware expire as fast as possible (while keeping the balance of 'not having the customer complain about reliability or performance' and 'not letting the competition get ahead, or too much ahead') Almost a black art ;-)