Google and Microsoft are going to follow Apple’s example in adding a so-called “kill switch” to their smartphone OS. According to the statistics, there has been a dramatic drop in theft of iPhones and iPads after the introduction of iOS7 that included a “kill switch” function which allowed stolen devices to be remotely locked and deleted and therefore made useless.

For example, iPhone theft in New York was down 19% in the first 5 months of 2014, which is almost double the 10% drop in overall robberies in the city. In the meantime, thefts of Samsung devices increased by 40% over the same period.

As for San Francisco, thefts of iPhones were 38% down in the 6 months after the iOS7 launch as compared with the 6 months before. In London, robberies were down by 24% over the same period. Everywhere, robberies of Samsung phones and tablets increased.

Some experts say that the drop could have been because the later versions of Apple devices were not as interesting to thieves as Samsung’s products, but the police are blaming the “kill switch”. New York State Attorney General has been trying to force smartphone vendors and telecom carriers to include similar features in their products as a way to address phone theft.

Despite the fact that Apple appreciated the very idea of “kill switch”, the other carriers and phone makers had still been hesitating, until several bills that mandate “kill switches” worked their way through state legislatures and the US Congress. Those bills demanded a function which would enable a phone owner to remotely delete and disable the device if stolen. The feature could be disabled by the users before a theft if desired, but the requirement is that the crucially new handsets be supplied with “kill switch” switched on by default.

Some of the industry observers believe that if most phones had a kill switch, the number of thefts would decrease due to the probability of a stolen phone remaining useful and thus having value would greatly diminish. They claim that the news appears to validate the “kill switch” feature as an effective part of a multi-layered approach to handling smartphone crimes. However, you should remember that crime is a complex subject and other factors could have contributed to drop in Apple-related thefts or the rise in those of Samsung devices.