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OnePlus 9T may have been canceled

By JC Torres/

At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that threw plans and schedules into chaos. Now the tech industry is facing yet another crisis, one that could affect anything that has an integrated chip, which is almost all electronics these days. Although smartphone companies are less forthcoming about it, insider sources reveal some reshuffling of schedules and products behind the scenes. One of those is OnePlus, which already canned some North American OnePlus 9 configurations because of the chip supply shortage and might even be canceling the OnePlus 9T for the same reason.

According to different sources, including Intel, the silicon problem could get worse before it gets better. Almost everyone down the line is affected, and some smartphone manufacturers might already be feeling the heat. Unlike its peers, OnePlus admitted that supply constraints forced it to cancel the OnePlus 9 base model for the US and Canada, focusing instead on the 12GB RAM, 256GB storage configuration.

Now it seems that another OnePlus product will be affected in a more drastic way. Few people already expect that there will be a OnePlus 9T Pro this year, considering there wasn't a OnePlus 8T Pro last year. Now tipster Max Jambor claims that there won't even be a OnePlus 9T this year at all.

He doesn't give any details about the cancellation, but it wouldn't be too far-fetched to presume it is related to the same supply constraints. That said, there is also speculation that it could be related to OnePlus' closer ties with OPPO, considering how some of its phones bear some similarities to the latter's products.

The hiatus could also be a good time for OnePlus to consolidate its smartphone lines. With two new OnePlus Nord models and two "mainline" phones, the smaller company might be spreading itself too thin. Then again, that may also be the reason for its partial merger with OPPO, to share the latter's resources to take some of the load off from itself.

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