First of all I want to mention that I use Android, I have since version 1.5. It's easily the best mobile OS on the market at the moment. Having said that, however, I have are some concerns about the whole state of Android.
Andoid is open source
It's true that android is open source, but only if you reduce the definition of open source to it's barest minimums. The whole development is closed, only when a new version is ready do they dump the source a little after they release the binaries. They call it the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), it should probably be called the Android Source Code Dump (ASCD). You can't really contribute to the "project", and because the whole development process is closed, you can't really maintain an active fork of it with code sharing easily.
Android Fragmentation
Fragmentation was something Apple fanbois liked to refer to in the early days of Android to refer to the fact that most handset where not on the same version. This was quite obvious FUD at the time, since most apps ran on most handsets quite fine. It did make developers lives a bit harder, but that just normal in an developing ecosystem. Just as anyone developing web apps between 2000 and 2008. :) There is however now a real fragmentation problem in Android, namely Google Apps vs. not Google Apps. Google has removed most of the cool features from AOSP, or at least stopped updating them. This means that the divide between an Open Handset Alliance (Google phone) and an independent Android handset is growing. I'm willing to bet that most apps in the Play store would not run on an non google handset without modifications. This is a big problem, since it in effect means that Google phone will start competing with non Google phones within the Android eco system.
The Open Handset Alliance
This whole thing is a freaking joke. The OHA is not open in any sense of the word. First of all, this alliance is not something you just join. You have to be a big player to even be considered. You have to be a member of the OHA to get access to Google Apps. If you ever release a phone the is incompatible with Googles closed source apps, you're out of the OHA. So this means that if you fork Android, your kicked out of the OHA. This is the kind of stuff that Intel got fined 1 milliard (billion in American) euros for in the EU courts. This is straight out antitrust behaviour.
What does this all mean?
I'm not sure what it all means. For the consumer not much have changed, you still get the same Android that you used to. There hasn't really been a need to "fork" Android other than for companies like Amazon who just want to create an even less open eco-system.
But Google is moving in an very worrying direction lately. I used to be a huge Google fanboi, they where just an awesome company. Lately their level of awesomeness have gone way down. Apologists are saying that they are just trying to make money, and their moves make sense if you think of them that way. But they made a shit-ton of money while they where awesome and open, why isn't a shit-ton enough?
If for some reason there should come a need to fork Android and make an Android Open Awesome Edition, Google has made it extemely hard to do. This of course makes business sense, because losing customers is not good for Google. But personally I believe in trying to get customers to want to stay instead of forcing them to. I would have followed "Awsome Googles" Android to hell and back, but if someone released a more promising phone OS tomorrow, I would be the first one off the Android bandwagon. (Here's looking at you Mark Shuttleworth)