NOKIA's customers are the carriers and large retailers, absolutely they know the score.

Let me remind you again, iPhone was released in 2007, Symbian comprehensively outsold it in every single quarter thereafter right up until Elop made the carriers/retailers drop it like a hot potato. That's a verifiable fact, look it up.

Where is your evidence that Symbian's collapse was just about to happen irrespective of Elop?
Did you read the page you yourself linked to?
NOKIA's sales of Symbian devices were increasing and they stated they could have shipped even more in the latter half of 2010 if it weren't for component shortages.

You love to keep making comparisons to the iPhone but in fact the average sales price of a Symbian device at Q4 2010 was around EUR 155-

It wasn't NOKIA's plan that Symbian would compete at the EUR 650- price level, that was the market MeeGo was to be aimed at.

When I became frustrated with my iPhone's many limitations and went back to Symbian my unlocked 5800 xm cost < 40% of the cost of my carrier locked iPhone.

The N8 was a great phone, photographers and techies would undoubtedly choose it above the iPhone, Joe Schmoe maybe not so much. Of course the N8 was only one Symbian device amongst a portfolio of many in many different formats.

Your logic reminds me of the story about a boy who trained a spider - when he told it to go left it went left, when he told it to go right it went right. He then pulled all the spiders legs off and found that it no longer obeyed his commands, when he told it to go left it didn't move, when he told it to go right it didn't move. He concluded from this pulling a spider's legs off makes them go deaf.