It's the same strategy that virtually every maker is following now. It's building out a platform, and its what you have to do to compete now.

I get the impression that Honeycomb isn't going to be coming to phones.

Their introductory video specifically says "built entirely for tablets". I don't know what the credibility of it is, but there was the rumor that the next iteration will be 2.4 and will be for handsets. Such a versioning strategy makes sense.

Obviously they would share considerable amounts of code. The "shell" is just a replaceable process.

Google certainly aren't doing well at pleasing their current customers

It's clear that Google and its open handset partnership is perilously understaffed right now, and they need to cut the umbilical going to whoever is screwing up this opportunity.

Android, I think, succeeded far beyond Google's dreams (originally tablets and PMPs were a no-go, but they've become a primary focus), but it seems to be moving far too slowly. A bunch of stuff they promised for 2.2 still isn't there in 2.3, and is only rumored for 3.0. They need to seriously pick up the pace.