Just a year after the former-flagship Desire was released, HTC's slammed any hopes of owners receiving a Gingerbread upgrade. Writing on the HTC UK Facebook fanpage, they credited it to there not being enough memory for both Gingerbread and the Sense UI.
For anyone who dislikes Android interfaces, this will be further meat for them to sink their teeth into while they snarl about "Android fragmentation." Personally, while I like Gingerbread and the nifty features it brings, I will credit Sense with making Android so much more usable. [HTC UK]
UPDATE: We put a question in to HTC to elaborate further on this, and this is what they told us:
"Because every HTC phone is a combination of a unique HTC hardware and software experience and a core operating system, we only update phones if it improves the customer experience as we balance features, performance and usability. Open access to Android means that third party developers are free to modify elements of the code, remove entire features or significantly alter the phone experience based on their preferences. Our priority is providing customers an HTC experience they can rely on."
So obviously you can still go ahead and root your Desire, and install Gingerbread on it. Please do remember it'll void your warranty though, folks!