> I really don’t understand what kind of a business decisions it is to own such a legendary brand with such as a rich and successful history and not use it.

I bet $1000 that's mostly due to ridiculous patents, business contracts with term limits, poor managerial decisions, and possibly EU regulations that make it more expensive/harder to innovate.

It's probably because HMD Global doesn't actually own the Nokia brand. It's an exclusive licensing agreement with the still-existing Nokia company that makes network infrastructure.

The details are very easy to find out on Wikipedia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global