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Rumours have been bubbling for several days about Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's internal 'Burning Platform' memo, outlining in blunt terms the challenges facing the company. Now it's leaked in full, and has been published on tech blog Engadget.

Elop certainly doesn't pull his punches, comparing Nokia to a North Sea oilman, who after an explosion was faced with the choice of staying on the burning platform for certain death, or jumping into the icy sea in the hope of being rescued.

"We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour," writes Elop, before outlining how Nokia's business is under attack at the high-end from Apple, at the mid-range from Android, and at the low-end by Chinese manufacturers.

"While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind," writes Elop.

"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable."

He goes on to say that Nokia is not bringing its internal innovation to market quickly enough - "We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market" - and criticises Symbian for being "an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements".

Elop also pinpoints the key shift in the mobile industry, from devices to ecosystems of hardware, software, developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, and location-based services.

"Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem."

Elop reiterates that Nokia will announce its new strategy this Friday. if anticipation wasn't already heated around the event, it certainly will be now.

Update: Analyst Tomi Ahonen has published a long blog post in which he asserts his belief that the memo is fake, written by a US analyst, due to "several astonishing errors and also 'obvious' missing pieces". However, since Engadget's publication this morning, BBC News Online says it has also "verified that the memo is genuine".