Which is it?

Maybe the smartphone marks the decline of the wireless hardware vendor and rise of the OS and applications provider. The iPhone seems to prove this. Maybe the only company that can make Android a hit in the marketplace is Google itself, by selling hardware it designs.

That is the "Google is cagey" argument.

Alternately, perhaps Google will get into the handset business and the other handset companies will run away, leaving Google alone with a loser phone and a not-very-exciting ecosystem on the edge of extinction. Almost like Microsoft, but for different reasons.

That's the "Google is nuts" argument.