First of all, the naming scheme for Android makes me want to stab my eyes out. It reeks of "juvenile".
Ok, pet peeve aside... ICS has only 5% penetration and they're releasing a new major version of the OS this summer? That seems... odd.
They had to name it something, and picking “deserts” as a theme is as good as any other theme. I’ve worked with companies that used the names of Scientists, explorers, rivers of North America, Greek Gods - as long as you pick a class and stay in it - everyone within the company understands. I’ve seen companies (Motorola) that started off with cats, and somehow moved onto bears with the same chip. The managment apparently got distracted by a flashing light or a shiny stone - they were stupid like that.
Apple chose to use cats (leopard, snow leopard, lion, mountain lion, etc. ect.).
But, the part that would concern me if I had a horse in this race is the non-support of legacy product. If you buy a brand new phone today - odds are high that in less than 6 months your phone has been dropped from the support structure.
Now, you can make the update install large, and each phone would only need load the updates that apply to that phone. This is what nVidia did for over a decade. You download 1 update and regardless what video card you had - you got the right drivers updated on your PC.
But, if you have an older phone with Gingerbread - you are stuck with Gingerbread. If you have ICS, the odds are that you will never get JellyBean. This has to be pure havok for any Android developer, in that he not only has to make his app work across various versions of the OS, but also a growing number of different hardware platforms (3,100+ at my last count). Each phone not only has unique chipsets, displays - but also entirely different OS’s.