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I am not a techie, but where there may be a problem is fragmentation. That has been a BIG DEAL in the smart phone market, where you had several versions of Android on the market at one time (from 1.5 to 2.2). Android aficionados would rail against manufacturers for being slow with updates and against carriers for "loading up" Android with "skins" and " crapware". The furor has subsided a little ( I think), but is still ongoing.
For tablets, it looks like the problem may be even worse. Amazon has apparently forked Android from a pre-2.2 version, and clearly intends to go its own way. Most Android tablets are running on Honeycomb (3.2?)and will presumably be getting Ice Cream Sandwich next year or whenever. B&N is running Gingerbread (2.3?) on NC and may or may not upgrade to Honeycomb. Hard to make a business case why it should, since HC offers functionality that is not needed for ebook and e-magazine reading.
What that means for devs is that they may have to develop several versions of the same Android app (vs only one for Ios). That may make it MORE expensive to develop for Android ( a platform for which they on average make LESS money than for Ios). That's going to continue to disadvantage Android development relative to Ios, I think.
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