Trustonic will work with smartphone manufacturers, mobile carriers, retailers and financiers globally to enable faster integration and implementation of smartphone locking at scale across the Android portfolio
May 1st, 2025. Trustonic, the world’s largest mobile device locking company, today announced that Google has approved it as a global partner for the Google Device Locking Program.
Trustonic has been working with Google on their ‘Device Lock Controller” (DLC) technology for the last three years, proving the growing market opportunity. This experience and its broader market traction makes Trustonic a trusted locking technology Integrator for this formal award and mass market launch.
The new deal will authorise Trustonic to deploy DLC locking technology globally on behalf of Google, acting as a powerful vehicle to scale the market for new device financing opportunities.
Secure device financing offered by mobile carriers, financiers and retailers, especially in emerging markets, makes smartphones more accessible by splitting the high upfront costs into manageable payments. Device locking, managed by Trustonic, is a crucial enabler of smartphone financing.
Trustonic has proven to reduce the risk of bad debt or repayment delinquency by practically eliminating the issue of Non Performing Loans (NPL). With the assurance of customers not defaulting on payments, higher tier devices can be offered, increasing the Average Selling Price (ASP) of entry-level devices by 57% year on year.
Google’s DLC technology is embedded is enabled in smartphones (Android 15 and beyond) by handset manufacturers. This opens up a broader range of smartphones, new possibilities for additional services and ensures the device financing customer experience is unified and positive. In turn this will encourage sales of higher-end and more premium Android phones.
Trustonic is unrivalled in its experience in device locking and a crucial enabler of smartphone financing. With over 280 million smartphones already managed in 36 countries, Trustonic supports every locking use case through native, OEM-built and Google device locking solutions.
Dion Price, Group CEO of Trustonic commented: “A staggering 3.5 billion people worldwide still don’t have a smartphone. Closing this gap is one of the greatest challenges – and opportunities – of our time. The smartphone is the most powerful tool for economic, educational, and healthcare access the emerging world has ever seen.
But affordability remains the biggest barrier by far. By working together with retailers, financiers and carriers to provide secure, flexible financing options – all underpinned by our locking platform – we are making real progress in bridging the digital divide.”
