I see it a lot like Windows PC OEMs. Microsoft makes Windows. You can install it on anything that will run it. On its own, it has its strengths and weaknesse

I see it a lot like Windows PC OEMs. Microsoft makes Windows. You can install it on anything that will run it. On its own, it has its strengths and weaknesses but it is a generally capable PC operating system. But anyone who has dealt with Windows PCs for the past decade or two are familiar with the concept of doing a wipe and a fresh install on some poor chump's laptop or desktop because it came loaded with so much garbage from Dell or Gateway or HP that the thing ran like utter shit. Thankfully, with a desktop OS, you can do that but on mobile, since the OS needs to be built with all sorts of proprietary drivers "baked in" it's not a matter of just installing base Android and running an update process to install the drivers for chipset and radios and other stuff. It was bad enough when cheap PCs gave the entire platform a bad name because in theory you could fix that with an hour or two of work. But with something like a phone, it can be damn near impossible to get hold of "stock" Android properly ported to your device. Even when a factory image exists, it may require more tweaking and bypassing than most people are comfortable with to get the thing installed. This does indeed reflect poorly on the OS as a whole but since OEMs only see Android as the solution to a "we need an OS for our hardware" problem, they don't seem to have much stake in the overall impression of Android. After having a couple of HTC phones and a Samsung phone, I just started buying Nexus or Nexus-like devices (like the Moto X) because, like you, I actually enjoy using Android when my devices aren't kept on outdated versions and loaded with unwanted addons.