Britain’s biggest police force has delivered an ultimatum to tech giants over the mobile phone theft epidemic. 

Scotland Yard’s commissioner said Apple, Samsung and Google had until June to ‘design out’ thefts by installing a kill switch that would turn stolen phones into an ‘unusable brick.’ 

If the firms missed the deadline Sir Mark Rowley said he would ask the Government to implement legislation forcing them to act. 

The commissioner has been in talks with manufacturers for two-and-a-half years but criticised the tech giants for being ‘polite but not serious.’ 

‘I’m setting a clear public marker, if by the first of June, industry has not come to the table in a genuinely serious and solution-focused way, with concrete commitments on stolen mobile phones… the Met will formally write to the Home Secretary to ask that she legislates,’ he told the International Mobile Phone Crime Conference in central London. 

Sir Mark, who referenced the Mail’s investigation into stolen phones being resold in Hong Kong at the event, said he could not understand why telecoms giants had not done more to protect their customers from theft. 

‘For nearly three years we have sought meaningful engagement with phone manufacturers and their response to date does not match the scale of harm and risk to their customers,’ he added. 

The international trade in stolen phones is worth millions, with devices stolen in London worth more in countries such as China because it has none of the government restrictions put in place by the authorities. 

The Mail revealed last month that British children as young as 14 are being recruited on social media to steal mobile phones before school for £400 each.

Gangs shipping stolen phones to Algeria, China and Hong Kong use Snapchat to target children to steal the devices - offering vast sums plus £100 bonuses to the most prolific phone snatchers. 

‘The exploitation of children in this trade is not just about individual offences,’ Sir Mark said. 

‘It’s an entry point into organised crime. 

‘Children recruited to snatch phones for quick cash are being groomed into criminal networks, normalised into offending behaviour and pushed further into exploitation. 

‘What begins as one device on a street corner becomes a pathway into debt, coercion, violence and deeper criminality.’ 

The Met wants anti-theft protection switched on by default, stolen phones to be rendered unusable, and better access to IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) data to make it easier to return devices to their owners.

Figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show only a fraction of devices taken in London are returned to their owners Between 2017 and February 27 2024, a total 587,498 phones were stolen in London excluding the City, 13,998 of which were recovered, and 573,500 were not.

Delegates from countries including Japan, Brazil, Spain, and the United States attended the conference, the first of its kind.

Sir Mark said weak security means criminals can still bypass locks, alter IMEIs, and sell parts that are not cryptographically tied to devices.

He said there would be no criminal market if a stolen phone were unusable, and called for similar action to that taken by the car industry to make car radios less attractive to steal.

‘Phone manufacturing software companies have invested massively in preventing access to your data,’ he said.

‘It’s an escalating war with fraudsters and cyber criminals, but they’ve been successful enough to allow us to run our lives, including our finances, on our phones.

‘Whilst they’ve worked hard on the financial and data security of our phones, they spend far less attention on the physical safety of their customers who walk through cities with a £1,000 or £2,000 device held loosely in their hands.

‘If a stolen phone were to become an unusable brick and the parts were not recyclable, there would be no criminal market.’

He added: ‘I do not understand why tech companies leave their clients at risk despite two or three years of discussions.

‘Until this device is worthless, the market will remain attractive to organised crime.’

A spokesman from Google said: 'Android's anti-theft features give added security for billions of people, including Londoners. 

'We were delighted to attend the Met Police’s conference to demonstrate our commitment to device safety, to outline our work to protect those who use our products and our world leading partnership with Sao Paulo police.'

Last month the Met said that the number of recorded phone thefts in London went from 81,365 in 2024 to 71,391 last year.

Separate figures available on the Met’s crime data website show that in 2023 there were 52,820 thefts from the person where a phone was taken, and 14,326 robberies; the figures for 2024 were 70,249 thefts and 11,125 robberies; and for 2025 61,292 thefts and 10,207 robberies.

In the space of the month to mid-February, the Met arrested 248 people over phone theft and recovered around 770 stolen handsets.

The force is using high-powered e-bikes and drones as part of its operations to stop phone theft.

But in a report for the London Policing Board, Sir Mark warned the Met remains ‘an outlier’ for the number of personal robberies per thousand people, and theft from the person.

The force also solves one of the smallest proportion of these offences compared with others in England and Wales.