Carolina Milanesi, a research vice president at Gartner, sees Google's main challenge at the conference as making Android more appealing economically to developers.

Good apps will also help Google establish loyalty to Android among consumers, Gottheil said. Because Android phones are generally cheaper than other smartphones, many are used as glorified feature phones with a Web browser, he said, leaving users little reason to stick with the platform.

"Some of those phones are really, really nice, but there's nothing that would make a user say, 'I want to hold on to this particular platform rather than that other shiny object,'" he said.

Analysts also want to see Google integrate Android with its desktop OS, Chrome -- or, said Enderle, to get rid of Chrome altogether.

"There were a lot of questions [from developers] at last year's I/O about the merging of Chrome OS and Android, and those questions went unanswered," said Brian Blau, a Gartner analyst.