Yeah, that was because before that Nokia had double the time it takes to get a phone on the market compared to everyone else who has already joined Android.
HTC, Samsung and Motorola can put a "next-gen" phone on the market within 10 months, maybe even 9. So can Apple, but they prefer to keep it on a 12 month cycle. Same goes for Sony Ericsson until more recently, but they've almost caught up with the others now. It's not a coincidence that the former 2 phone manufacturing leaders were the slowest.
Nokia's "last good Symbian phone", the N8, took like a year and a half to get launched, maybe more. The "Meego based" phone, the N9, was also delayed a lot (had different name for a while).
Does this mean they have caught up with everyone else now? I don't see it. Maybe it's because WP7's slow adoption rate for latest hardware, or it's Nokia's fault again, or maybe both. But I still see them using very old hardware in their phones, which means their development cycle for "current" phones started quite a while back. Otherwise they should be able to make phones with cutting edge technology, like most Android manufacturers and Apple can.