Agreed, but I doubt that Nokia execs knew it (or some knew, but weren't in the majority). I think Nokias biggest mistake was to commit to WP 100%, at a time when they didn't even have handsets ready. The completely silly estimate of selling hundreds of millions of Symbian smartphones after that announcement just underscores that.
Really? The way I remember it was that the Lumia 920 was hyped up massively online. If people didn't like WP8, they at least admitted that the camera looked amazing. The buzz seemed to die before it even launched though..