Cell Phone Losses / Theft totals $30B. Annually.

News Item, Source:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/11/20/carriers-reject-kill-switch-for-stolen-smartphones/

What Caught My Eye:

"Almost 1 in 3 U.S. robberies involve phone theft, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Lost and stolen mobile devices -- mostly smartphones -- cost consumers more than $30 billion last year, according to a study cited by Schneiderman in June."

Huh?

I thought this was a huge number. Check that. This is a huge number. I thought it was significant. Decided to do a very small amount of sanity checking. After all, if this is a significant problem, shouldn't we have a Smart Phone Theft Czar in DC ?

How do we put this figure in perspective? Lets compare the value of this market to something we absolutely, with a doubt, suspect to be a real problem.  Drug trafficking.

After searching for the value of illegal drug trade in the US, I found some of the high ranking search results dated to 1997, 1998, and 2005. Turns out the United Nations publishes a World Drug Report (WDR) with some figures.

The WDR estimates global illicit drug trade at approximately 1% of global GDP. Further, treatment costs are estimated at 0.9% of GDP and lost productivity costs at 0.3% - 0.4% of GDP. Or, cumulatively at 2.2% of GDP. In 2003, the value of the global drug trade (only the first component) was placed at $320B. Double it up to cover the treatment and productivity costs provides a value of $640B. Ten years ago.

Getting to a US-centric figure, if we use Wikipedia's list of countries by GDP, the US GDP is about 22% of global GDP. As I suspect the US has a greater share of disposable income, higher health care costs and greater productivity than many countries on the list, using 22% of the global drug trade figure may establish a lower bound of $140B on the value of illicit drugs' impact on the US.

Guess we dont need a Smart Phone Theft Czar, do we?

Eyes. Opened.