HTC’s been in something of a slump for the last six months or so, showing flat or dropping sales in the face of competitors like Samsung and Apple. And while their first quarter of 2012 isn’t exactly showing an amazing turnaround, there’s light at the end of the turned for the Taiwanese manufacturer. When compared with the excellent numbers the company put up in 2011, HTC steadily cut its margin of losses in February and March, going from a n over 50% decline to just 16.6%.

In the January-March period in 2011, HTC had a total income of 104 billion NTD, about 3.5 billion US dollars. In the same period in 2012, they made just 67.8 billion NTD, or just under 2.3 billion dollars. While that’s a pretty dire drop, the losses are getting slimmer – March 2012′s income alone saw a 50% growth over the previous month, and is down a much smaller percentage from the previous year. It’s not exactly coming up roses, but it’s getting better.

And those numbers were all before the HTC One series went on sale in various markets. The One X, One S and One V are the cornerstone of HTC’s 2012 strategy, putting next-generation features and software into a family of phones that consolidates HTC’s formerly sprawling hardware lineup. The company has said previously that they’re focusing on a “Hero” device strategy, and though we’ve seen a few One X variants and entry market smartphones, it does indeed seem like HTC is releasing much fewer devices compared with a year ago. Hopefully that means that they’ll be able to offer more timely Android upgrades as well. It’ll be interesting to see how the One series affects HTC’s bottom line in another three months.