> no extra skins

On the other hand, I have found some of the features of Samsung's skin to be more useful than stock Android. The competition is good.

I have a Samsung tablet where I really don't want some of their crud. (The device came with no less than 3 apps named "Music", and two named "Books".) I'd strongly prefer the vanilla Honeycomb skin and not Touchwiz, but I don't get that choice.

What they could have done is make it possible to turn off. And sell it in the Android market for other non-Samsung devices. (If it is that good then other people will want it.)

I've got a handful of Samsung devices and I'm sick and tired of touchwiz on all of them. It's not consistent between devices and versions, it duplicates features and software that's already built in, and it's bloated/slow.

The question then becomes, how big a chunk of the general public cares about a phone "now messed with by your carrier, no bloatware, no extra skins" etc.?

I think that most people who understand what that means would want it, but how many are really savvy enough understand?

> ... but how many are really savvy enough understand?

It doesn't matter! If they don't then Google's direct approach will be a commercial failure, and nobody is any worse off.

But remember that the people who write reviews, publish articles and are the recommender in their circle of friends and colleagues are more likely to care about this sort of thing.