At one point, every carrier that wasn’t AT&T and didn’t have the iPhone had an Android smartphone as its flagship device and there was a good chance that said handsets were coming from HTC. Much of this remains true today but the likes of Motorola and Samsung have become much more prominent. HTC has been churning out phones like no other and it looks like the company may be shifting its handset strategy: Fewer phones with better quality.

Instead of releasing 80 different phones like it did in 2011, HTC is planning to scale back its handset portfolio significantly in 2012, with only a few key handsets launching in the beginning of the year. One of these devices is said to be called the HTC Elite, a high-end handset with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running the show and Beats Audio support. On top of that, HTC is also expected to release a handset similar to the Titan, which will run Windows Phone 7 and support LTE. Both of these handsets will likely land on AT&T in the first half of the year.

While it’s no surprise that HTC will launch an Ice Cream Sandwich phone next year, we’re just as interested in the new Windows Phone. The Windows Phone may indeed be the first handset that will support LTE, which should make fans of the OS pretty happy and may sway some potential Android users who crave LTE on their next handset purchase.

HTC’s new focus on quality is certainly welcomed but confusing at the same time. Most HTC handsets have very solid hardware and build quality and we’re not exactly sure what it’s plans are but we’re just going to have to wait and see what it has cooking up. Now, if only Sense would be scaled back a bit, I may consider grabbing another HTC phone at some point.

[Via: BGR]