Surprise: Widely Owned Cell Phones Are Most Likely To Be Stolen

from the makes-sense dept

Keeping a list of the most stolen cars makes a lot of sense. It lets consumers know which ones they might want to avoid, or at least buy a LoJack for. But keeping a list of the most stolen phones doesn’t do a whole lot of good. All phones are equally hard to steal, so you’d expect a tally of the phones most likely to be stolen to pretty much reflect their popularity. So it’s not surprising that a new study from England says that Nokias are the most stolen phone, since, well, Nokia has the largest market share. The Motorola RAZR comes in high, but again, it’s a popular phone. If people switched away from Nokias after this news, and instead started buying LGs, in mass, then in all likelihood, LGs would shoot to the top of the most-stolen charts, as well. The director of the study, eager to defend its relevence said, “The top 10 charts are a step in the right direction though, because they empower consumers with information, which should stimulate anti-crime design efforts by the mobile phone industry.” Anti-crime designs like what? A phone that will deliver an electric shock if it doesn’t recognize the pulse of the hand that holds it? A macephone? Actually, that might sell pretty well.


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Comments on “Surprise: Widely Owned Cell Phones Are Most Likely To Be Stolen”

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26 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

i dont get it… isn’t this logic?

If the phone model is very popular, then there are more of them out in the public (than other models), which means more likely when theives steal, they would encounter such phones to steal. Therefore, more of the stolen ones would be of that popular phone model.

obviously i generalized, but it’s pretty logical to me.

William C Bonner (profile) says:

Why steal a cell phone?

Why would anyone want to steal a cell phone these days? Cell phones don’t cost consumers that much. Telephone air time is fairly cheap. A stolen phone can be reported and rendered useless, or at least useless without registering for new service, or putting in a new SIM.

I have not read the article, but I could write an article pointing out that the most popular cell phones are the most likely to be lost based on simple statistics.

The most frustrating thing with losing a cell phone is deciding what to replace it with, and then getting it all synced back up with the correct address book.

rijit (profile) says:

LOL! This reminds me of that stupid cell phone commercial, the first guy claims the cell phone has an anti theft device. So the other guy says let me see it. So the first guy nails him in the head with the phone from across the room.

Funny commercial but the actual advertisement for it sucked, I can’t remember which company did the commercial.

I like the idea of a tazer phone, detects your life rythem and if the wrong person is scanned: Zap!

Xcetron says:

I think the best way would be to have some kind of security system that requires a key of somesort to open/powerup/access the phone, such as having a security card and slide it through a reader on the phone will power it up and that all the cards are different so youd have to steal the card as well if you want to use the phone.

Just a thought.

discojohnson says:

Uhm, Joe...

your reasoning for this list being pointless would then also apply to the automobil listing. yes, civics are stolen so damn much because they’re popular and the resell value is there. THE SAME APPLIES FOR A PHONE. walking off with a phone you see laying down is generally a lot easier then stealing a car…any good pick-pocket can gank one…so publishing a list of top 10s to walk away with makes sense as it’d make consumers aware that someone else will really want theirs, so take care of it (funny, just like a popular car). anti-crime bits have very llittle to do with this and i’m not sure why suddenly the mobile phone manufacturers should somehow make a theft deterrent on the devices

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