Then it means that it's time for an update for most folks - 18-24 months is the norm.

I think it's pretty common knowledge that Honeycomb just wasn't ready for primetime, it was really Gingerbread at a different dpi density and a lot of clean up had to happen that started with ICS, now it's fully done at Jelly Bean.

Simply stated, skipping from one version of Android to the newest one is perhaps the best case scenario and likely to happen for most folks. You'd have to be a fan, rich, or stupid (or combinations therein) to have experienced each and every version of Android.