Even if you don't see any problems with a company being more transparent on such issues doesn't mean that there are no problems.

Official statements can easily backfire with the media happily spreading the news enriched with some made-up extra-information to generate more clicks.

Also even a CTO or CEO is bound by NDA if it involves another company. And in case of hardware it certainly involves another company as Jolla isn't building the phone themselves in a garage in Finland. Should Jolla really risk losing their hardware manufacturer or worse, just for this?