[lerouxb]

How about they target just one chipset, then. Once that one is a lot faster than all the others due to driver quality no one will want to buy phones using the other chipsets until they have faster drivers. People wouldn't have to be technical either - gadget reviewers and early adopters will highlight it for them. Games might only support the better chips or at least recommend them, etc. So eventually no phone manufacturers will use those chipsets until they have faster drivers because people just won't buy their phones. So the chipset people will have to raise the quality of their drivers in order to compete.

This isn't very different to what happened in the PC market over time. Remember how many graphics card makers there used to be before things settled around ati and nvidia?

What might also happen is that the gpus will start to behave in a similar way, giving you some of the advantage that iOS already enjoys. Kinda like directx or certain "standard" opengl extensions.

Android probably doesn't need 100 completely different chipsets. Some number higher than 1 is probably ideal for innovation and competition, yes, but it is obviously inevitable that not every player will survive in the long run anyway.

I suspect that without Google's intervention nvidia will probably win on driver quality in the long term because of their experience in their area along with tegra's current momentum. But you never know - as it becomes obvious that driver quality affects sales some of the other players might catch on in time too.

It looks like this sort of thing is already happening. Phone makers are bringing out less new models per year, there are fewer chipsets being used, android is getting better and better, the android-reskins that phone manufacturers do are getting more minimal... I suspect it will sort itself out in time.