Monday, June 17, 2013

Smartphone Makers Pushed to Add Kill Switch for Stolen Phones

Smartphone Theft thumb Smartphone Makers Pushed to Add Kill Switch for Stolen Phones
Smartphone makers are pushed by American officials to come up with a mechanism which will ideally make smartphones useless and just a piece of plastic if it is stolen.
Move is aimed at discouraging the smartphone theft and making it almost useless to steal a smartphone.
Officials driving the campaign have met Samsung, Apple and Microsoft – who account for 90 percent of smartphone market share – to convince them for adding a kill switch in smartphones, trigging which should disable the smartphone for any use in any case.
Ideally, if kill switch is activated, the smartphone will become a paperweight with not performing any functionality in any case. The mechanism on how this kill switch should get activated is still being argued and is likely to meet a consensus after deliberation.
If such a mechanism is worked out and put in practice, this will help Asian and especially South Asian markets to a greater extent. Since these regions are heavily burdened with phone theft cases and especially when smartphones are too expensive compared with usual commodities, such a kill switch can add further value for the consumers.

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