Rather than waiting for pending legislation to mandate an anti-theft kill switch, the leading mobile phone manufacturers and service providers—including Apple, Samsung, Huawei, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint—came together Tuesday to impose their own solution.

The new “Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment” stipulates that new phones made after July 2015 will have a “preloaded or downloadable” anti-theft tool.

Two months ago, Mark Leno, a California state senator introduced a bill in response to the rise of smartphone theft. More than 50 percent of all robberies in San Francisco involve a smartphone, according to law enforcement statistics Leno cites in his bill. Sections of the bill also note that smartphone theft was up 12 percent in Los Angeles in 2012, and nationwide, 113 smartphones are lost or stolen each minute.

Should the California bill become law in the Golden State, it likely would have a dramatic effect on sales of mobile phones across the US as companies could not afford to ignore the country’s most populous state.

This free tool, according to the CTIA, the mobile industry trade group, will include the ability to:

Remote wipe the authorized user's data (i.e., erase personal info that is added after purchase such as contacts, photos, emails, etc.) that is on the smartphone in the event it is lost or stolen. Render the smartphone inoperable to an unauthorized user (e.g., locking the smartphone so it cannot be used without a password or PIN), except in accordance with FCC rules for 911 emergency communications, and if available, emergency numbers programmed by the authorized user (e.g., "phone home"). Prevent reactivation without authorized user's permission (including unauthorized factory reset attempts) to the extent technologically feasible (e.g., locking the smartphone as above). Reverse the inoperability if the smartphone is recovered by the authorized user and restore user data on the smartphone to the extent feasible (e.g., restored from the cloud).

Leno isn’t convinced.

“The wireless industry today has taken an incremental yet inadequate step to address the epidemic of smartphone theft,” the San Francisco state senator said in a statement sent to media on Tuesday.

“Only weeks ago, they claimed that the approach they are taking today was infeasible and counterproductive," Leno said. "While I am encouraged they are moving off of that position so quickly, today’s ‘opt-in’ proposal misses the mark if the ultimate goal is to combat street crime and violent thefts involving smartphones and tablets. For stolen phones to have no resale value on the black market, the vast majority of consumers must have the theft-deterrent feature pre-enabled on their phones, using an ‘opt-out’ solution. Inexplicably, the mobile industry refuses to take this approach, which will simply prolong the epidemic of thefts we’re seeing in California and the rest of the country."