If you're talking about movies or Halloween costumes, zombies are scary fun. However, when the term for the undead refers to company-owned or BYOD mobile phones, CIOs are looking at the potential for frightening amounts of buried expenses. It’s Halloween season, and that means zombies and other scary stuff. We’re talking about zombie-killing for a livin’, we’re talking about sharkin’ (a slightly altered quote from Jaws, one of the scariest movies of all time). In tech speak, however, zombie phones (a term coined by Amtel, a mobile device management company) are scary in a different way. They are corporate-owned or BYOD phones thought to be deactivated yet these undead phones are still sucking dollars from the mobile budget. It’s no joke, despite the corny intro. During an audit of mobile devices for a large multinational biotech company, Amtel discovered that 2 percent of mobile phones were zombie phones that were costing the company $70,000 annually. Amtel revisited the zombie phone by crafting a Halloween-themed infographic. If you want your zombie fix, or you’re a CIO in need of a little scare, check it out: Tom Kaneshige covers Apple, BYOD and Consumerization of IT for CIO.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn. Email Tom at tkaneshige@cio.com Related content feature 13 essential skills for accelerating digital transformation IT leaders too often find themselves behind on business-critical transformation efforts due to gaps in the technical, leadership, and business skills necessary to execute and drive change. By Stephanie Overby Jun 05, 2023 12 mins Digital Transformation IT Skills tip 3 things CIOs must do now to accurately hit net-zero targets More than a third of the world’s largest companies are making their net-zero targets public, yet nearly all will fail to hit them if they don’t double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030. This puts leading executives, CIOs in particul By Diana Bersohn and Mauricio Bermudez-Neubauer Jun 05, 2023 5 mins CIO Accenture Emerging Technology case study Merck Life Sciences banks on RPA to streamline regulatory compliance Automated bots assisted in compliance, thereby enabling the company to increase revenue and save precious human hours, freeing up staff for higher-level tasks. By Yashvendra Singh Jun 05, 2023 5 mins Digital Transformation Robotic Process Automation feature Expedia poised to take flight with generative AI CTO Rathi Murthy sees the online travel service’s vast troves of data and AI expertise fueling a two-pronged transformation strategy aimed at growing the company by bringing more of the travel industry online. By Paula Rooney Jun 02, 2023 7 mins Travel and Hospitality Industry Digital Transformation Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe