iamadev :
The5c is built by 2 companies and both received almost 20% cut in orders, they can't just go somewhere else to bump up the numbers. Articles like this are generally accurate and have been reported in many places.
Apple is well aware that sales will spike on release day and would have planned for that so to say it is just because of the post release slump is wrong, it is just not selling quite as well as they would have liked.
Don't worry though apparently sales of the 5s are going swimmingly, your favourite tech company is doing just fine.
This is what i'm talking about. I immediately get accused of being a fanboy simply for doubting some so-called "news". Yes, I have an iPhone (not one of the new ones, and not plannign on getting a new one soon as this one does the job) but I am far from a fanboy, I f**ing hate a lot of things about Apple, especially iTunes. Its a bloody abomination, and Safari on Windows is a joke. However for personal reason i choose to have an iPhone now. I've had an HTC Android phone before and i've used an S3 for work, and seriously considered a Nexus 4 for my last upgrade. I'm not here to debate the merits of each, but needless to say Apple is FAR from "my favorite company".
My problem with these headlines is more due to my degree in media studies and journalism, and what passes for it these days is tragic.
The source for this post (I can't call it an article) is the WSJ who have a history of badmouthing Apple at every chance they get. The original report comes from a Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/us-apple-5c-idUSBRE99F08J20131016 which also attempts to speculate on "poor sales" and such but at the very end they burried this bit:
"Some analysts caution against correlating the cuts to Apple’s supplier orders with poor sales, because of the complexity and opacity of the company’s supply chain.
“We’ve seen this several times. There are too many moving parts in the supply chain to draw any conclusions,” said Benedict Evans, who covers mobile and digital media at Enders Analysis, a research consultancy in London.
“We don’t know what other suppliers they use or what inventory they already have.”
That there is the crux of it. There is no way to draw conclusions from what Apple is doing here. Even as you yourself say, it might even have been planned by Apple all along, it may have been some sort of insurance agains exceptional demand, or against poor yields, or a reaction to better yields than expected (As I mentioned in my first post), or it may indeed be due to a poorer than expected demand.
Point is, I expect this type of cherry picked headline and news from somewhere like phnadroid.com but not from Tom's i've read Tom's since I had access to internet over a decade ago and its always been one of the more classy publications but more and more are falling for the linkbait trap.
Hell, i'm wasting time here debating pointless shit with people I don't know because of it. Whatever.