If it were selling well then why the need to change strategy? What is wrong with you people, one day you are saying they were struggling to sell phones the next they were hot sellers. It clearly wasn't selling enough in their eyes for them to have pushed for a strategy change. The N8 was their flagship high-end mass marketed device and was available long before the Elop announcement so that particular phone wasn't Osborned, and when it was much later on what was the reason for doing so if they believed it sold well?
The decline in handset sales were there and it still is today. It may be a "classic" among the Nokia fans but that's all it is, much like the N900.

Sticking a good camera on a WP (which is no more desirable and doing no better than the symbians of past or present) and expecting it to sell on that fact alone is in my opinion being far too optimistic. The same misplaced optimism that was shown after the announcement, sticking WP on a Nokia and expecting sales to skyrocket or even increase.

Expecting a Lumia Pureview to turn things around has little research behind it and is very much an individual wanting a particular thing and that individual expecting the mass market to react in kind. Cost cutting is a different matter.