Why is this considered a rumor? Why would it be unusual for Apple to lay off staff, every company has laid off staff in the past year or so. I didn't think such a practice would be considers odd if Apple were to do it.
But wait, have these competitors given up on trying to match the new iPads resolution of 2015x1536? All these non retina android tablets don't seem very compelling to me.
And the reason why HTC is failing in the smartphone market is because it manufactures 6x different models and types of android phones, if they wanted to emulate Apple, they would have only one model and make it the best phone they can make.