The last half of 2011 wasn’t kind to top-tier smartphone manufacturer HTC. After predicting a flat final quarter and negative growth for the first part of 2012, the company failed to meet even those lowered expectations. Now they’ve published their 2011 financial results in full, and to say the least, it doesn’t look good. Year-over-year, the company dropped 2.5% in revenue even while making and selling more devices, with a negative growth of 52.55%. As one of the “Big Three” Android OEMs, this is disturbing news for HTC while Samsung continues to extend its lead worldwide.

“We dropped the ball,” said CFO Wintson Yung, referring both to the disappointing results and what the company considers to be a stagnant year for its own design and development teams. The executive took time to single out HTC’s first wave of LTE devices as particularly disheartening. The company’s outlook for this quarter – now about half over – isn’t any better, as they expect to drop total revenue by another 36% year-over-year. If international megacorps used sports vernacular, HTC would be calling this a “rebuilding year”.

Their strategy for that rebuild is centered around hero devices, less individual phones and tablets with more development and PR attention devoted to each. While neither has been officially unveiled, we’re fairly certain that the first two will be the HTC Ville and HTC Edge, a mid-range and high-end Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, respectively. The Ville was leaked on camera last week, along with its Sense UI 4.0 interface. Expect to see both devices, along with a somewhat humbled HTC promotional blitz, at Mobile World Congress in a couple of weeks.

[via SlashGear]