Re: Conspiracy theory?
If I remember rightly the N8 came out a little while after the memo hit the news and what surprised most people is that it was a really decent phone, this raised the obvious question as why so thoroughly burn the platform when it was still producing quality products.
Granted it's time was up, but a quiet, managed wind-down would have worked much better.
As it was all the bad press hurt sales of the remaining Symbian phones while the WP7 devices were still hung up in development.