Today was an important day for Nokia. After months of planning, we proudly introduced the Nokia N8, our latest smartphone and the first to feature the Symbian^3 platform. When it goes on sale this summer, we’re confident that the N8 is going stand out for its ability to create and consume media, and stay connected with social networks. We’re also confident that the products that make their way to our customers are going to be the best possible quality: Refined, tested, re-tested, evaluated, tested again, and then – once we’re all perfectly happy – shipped.

That is why yesterday, as I am sure many of you have read, wasn’t much fun for us. Unfortunately, an early prototype made its way to someone that wasn’t supposed to have it, and his early first impressions of the device and its software spread like wildfire. Buried deep down in the blogger’s salacious headlines about the software not being ready, was the most important point. This is a very early, pre-production prototype with dated software that is not yet ready. So the site’s comments that the software ‘felt premature’ is probably one of the more blindingly obvious things you will read this year.

This wasn’t the first time a Nokia product appeared online before it had been announced. This particular site openly flaunts its ability to acquire our property. Yes, we have to take a look at ourselves, and we are diligently hunting down the source of these leaks. Frankly, we pride ourselves on trust at Nokia, and someone has greatly betrayed that.

However, whilst we are determined to protect our intellectual property and maintain the surprise when a shiny new gadget is introduced, we are not going to do so at the expense of the working conditions we enjoy here at Nokia. We are not the Secret Police, and we want to maintain our culture of openness. We won’t let days like yesterday alter that.

So now that the official news is out, we’d like our prototype back. Please.