On October 16, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) initially released the article "Apple Cuts iPhone 5C Orders," authored by Ian Sherr, Lorraine Luk and Eva Dou. The report conveyed supplier cuts less than one-third from the Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and 20 percent from the Pegatron Corp.

Upon release it becomes big news all over the Internet albeit it is below par conceived interpretations of unverified data. In that same report, the Wall Street Journal failed to mention the number of iPhone 5c they had been creating, the total number of models it originally planned to create this quarter and the number of models it will produce as a response to its production yields.

Source: Apple Official Web Site

WSJ further speculated that the reduced orders fuelled the less-than-expected demands and Apple's pricing strategy. On that same day of October 16, WSJ changed the controversial headline to "Apple's Dual iPhone Strategy in Doubt". The revised article cited an Orange executive stating that the iPhone 5c is not doing very well as anticipated because of its high price and the iPhone 4S is still a cheaper choice. Nonetheless, Orange still did not mention the number of models it was retailing of every iPhone model.

Despite Tim Cook's warning during Apple's January quarterly earnings conference that analysts should not base their predictions on supply chain "checks" in 2013, analysts issued "supply chain check" reports that led to erroneous headlines all over the Internet.

Also, apart from supply chain checks, several reports were made on the iPhone 5c cuts in China and US, which is again, an implausible conclusion to draw given that iPhone 5c is outselling Samsung Galaxy S4 in four major U.S. carriers and the iPhone 5c remains in the top three smartphone models.