With Google not introducing any hardware at its annual conference last week, this raises the question of what role hardware can or should play for the company going forward.

The annual conference is geared toward software developers, and Google has previously taken the opportunity to unveil new devices such as it did with the Nexus 7 tablet at the 2012 conference. While the company's $12.5 billion purchase of mobile hardware manufacturer Motorola is still in the recent past, the absence of any hardware news suggests hardware is not a big focus for the moment.

?It isn?t about changing the core philosophy, but it is about instead running it like a startup, an innovation hub, it is going to be more about now we are in charge of a giant ecosystem of software, suppliers and devices, let?s start to run this more like a big business,? said Michael Morgan, analyst at ABI Research, New York.

?You can still keep the core philosophy, but there are tactical things that you need to do differently, like perhaps using hardware as a platform to set the bar for your ecosystem, to reduce fragmentation and help the OEMS develop better handsets and lower costs,? he said.

A strategic tool
With the development process for handsets starting two years before a device hits the market, one reason for the lack of hardware news out of Google may be simply that it is still trying to absorb Motorola and is not ready to bring out any new devices yet.

Still, if the question is how big of role will hardware play for Google going forward, then the lack of any news at the I/O conference would seem to suggest that, at the very least, Google does not feel under pressure to make a big hardware play right now.

Additionally, the margins it is making from Motorola hardware are significantly smaller than the margins for software.

Rather than approaching hardware as a revenue generator, Google may be looking to use it as a strategic tool to enable the company to align other Android manufacturers around its vision of what Android devices should be.

?Instead of saying Motorola is going to run as this competitive standalone brand in smartphones, Motorola could become in a sense kind of like what the Nexus does for the Android ecosystem,? Mr. Morgan said. ?Here is the latest software tied to some hardware, almost kind of like a reference design or a way to set the bar for other OEMS, to say this is what Android should be with now, the kind of hardware it should be with.

?It would be more about strategically aligning the ecosystem and less about trying to compete with the other handset OEMs, which is something that they don?t want to do,? he said.

Android fragmentation
Such a strategy could help Google address the continued issue of fragmentation in the Android system.

The challenge for Google is getting so many different Android handset manufacturers on the same page.

Right now, OEMs have to use up a lot of memory in Android phones for basic features. For example, the 16 GB Samsung Galaxy S IV has 8 GB taken up by Samsung software.

If some of the key features are built into the reference platform, this would enable OEMs to focus more on developing unique features to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and to be more efficient in terms of memory and power.

This might help OEMs begin to push Android prices even lower as well. Or to charge premium prices for unique features that might appeal to early adopters.

?As far as maybe reducing fragmentation, it could be a good tool to do that,? Mr. Morgan said.

?Instead of these companies trying to reinvent the wheel every time for themselves, if Google were to release these reference designs, it sort of does a lot of that development work for the OEMs,? he said.

?They can borrow and build on top of that so that they can make better phones at a lower cost without having to spend so much on their own R&D.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York