gingerbread's minimum requirements announcement = google's rough way of standardizing android
although i don't think it would be a bad thing. 3.0 will separate the "tablet/phone" from the smart-phone(2.2).
1.6 and 2.1 will slowly disappear in the market ( phone contract expiry is one big reason, although i bet many will still circulate in the reselling market. good thing there's custom roms...)
the smart-phones will be divided into the low-end (wildfire, x10-mini), and and the hi-end (n1,desire). the in-betweens would just be laggy hi-ends.