The analogy would work if IP "theft" was anything like actual theft, ie, if the company actually lost anything that could be recovered by "repossessing" the software.
A closer analogy - and still not exactly, since the owner would still have actually lost the car - would be if the police came and burned it down just so that you couldn't use it.
They company surely did lose something. Customers who wanted to buy their product ended up buying an illegal competitor's product instead. There might even be some customers who go back and buy a genuine phone now that they can't use their fake one.
They're enforcing their copyright. Why not? The police can also confiscate computers with pirated software on them. They even do that sometimes. It doesn't return the money to the IP owners but it's still a way to deter theft.
It sounds like a good idea to me. Even if it doesn't recover their lost sales, it should prevent future black market copies since customers will know to avoid unofficial sellers.
You can't assume that someone who bought a $200 phone would buy the exact same phone for $300 if the $200 option was unavailable (I don't know the exact prices but the Ars article said that there were price differences of up to $100).
Going even further, the analogy is still a little bit flawed, because the people buying the phones have reason to believe the phone was NOT stolen (it came brand new, sealed in a box).
It'd be like if you bought a brand new car from a dealership, then two weeks later the police came to your house, told you it was stolen and burnt it down.
A closer analogy - and still not exactly, since the owner would still have actually lost the car - would be if the police came and burned it down just so that you couldn't use it.