You are right that you can construct a scenario where e.g. screen components could have been cut by half. Thanks for typing it out. The WSJ article, though, attributes the cuts in component orders to weaker iPhone demand: 'because of weaker-than-expected demand'. That's my beef with their reporting. If they had just stated 'one of Apple's suppliers has got its order reduced by half', I would have no problem with the article. Trying to tie it to iPhone demand is just conjecture.

Just like you said in your conclusion: don't overextrapolate from (potentially faulty) supply chain sources. Which seems to be exactly what the Nikkei article is doing again. There is very little info in it: 'Apple will trim production of its iPhone family around 10% on the year in the first quarter of 2017, according to calculations by The Nikkei based on data from suppliers'. So, they have some information from suppliers (all of them?), and they have some model (how accurate is that model?) that points to an iPhone production cut. To me that seems like overextrapolation again... And I agree with you that this is not 'fake news', but it is also not good reporting either.