Google has made the Holo theme mandatory on all Ice Cream Sandwich devices. To have access to the Android Market, and other Google services, all devices running Android 4.0 must have the Holo theme available.
The change has been made to help solve the problem of fragmentation. By having a number of different custom user interfaces it causes problems for some apps to display correctly. By making the theme mandatory it allows developers to work more easily with Android. Not being a developer myself I do not fully know what impact it has had in the past. However, Google is convinced it will help give Android a more consistent look and feel.
There are problems left with Android and that is the sheer amount of different variations of smartphones and tablets available. Although different devices are good, the main problems comes with different carriers and the whole update processes. You might have a Galaxy S II unlocked and unbranded version receive an update months before a carrier locked version. If Google could figure out how to keep all compatible devices up to date at the same time they would keep a lot of people happy.
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