So with iOS 7, Apple introduced Activation Lock which was basically a way to disable a stolen iPhone. The idea is that if the thief is unable to resell the phone due to it being locked, it would deter them from stealing iPhones in the future. In fact upon launch, the feature was actually praised by government officials.
It was also discovered that iPhone-related theft in certain cities such as San Francisco had gone down. Unfortunately it seems that the success of Activation Lock in San Francisco wasn’t a very good indication of its success in general, because according to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, it isn’t a dead ringer for success.
As you can see in the graph above, smartphone theft in cities such as Seattle actually increased by 32%. In fact the only city out of the four listed that seemed to have some kind of steady decline would be San Francisco, while the others did see a sharp drop but after that the numbers began to rise again.
So why is this? It has been speculated that thieves who continued to steal iPhones were working on the chance that older devices might not have Activation Lock turned on by default. There is also the option of selling the phone for parts even if it can’t be used as a whole, so while thieves might not be able to get the same amount, they can still get something for their efforts.