Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will – as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren't taking the rejection lying down: They're turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist – and even earn developers some money.
That store is operated by Jay Freeman, more fondly known in the iPhone "Jailbreak" community as Saurik. Only five months old, his app store Cydia specializes in selling apps that Apple would reject or ban (or already has). To use Cydia or the apps available through it, customers need to
jailbreak their phones
– hack them to work around Apple-imposed restrictions – a process that
Apple claims is illegal
.
Indeed, you can even get a Google Voice app, GV Mobile, through Cydia. After Apple pulled the app from its App Store, developer Sean Kovacs (who is not affiliated with Google) made it available for free through Cydia.
It's difficult to get accurate data on how many customers have jailbroken their iPhones. But based on the number of unique device identifiers tracked on his server, Freeman claims that about 4 million, or 10 percent of the 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners to date, have installed Cydia. On a recent day, he said 470,000 people were connecting to the Cydia store, up from 350,000 per day just a few months ago. Among many free apps, there are also 15 paid apps in Cydia, and the store has earned $220,000 in overall sales in just five months.
"People are so annoyed by Apple and their shit, and if you give them opportunity to go around it, then they'll even pay for it," said Kim Streich, a developer whose app 3G Unrestrictor earned $19,000 in sales in just two weeks through Cydia.
Though Cydia is relatively young, the underground "Jailbreak" community has existed since the first iPhone launched in 2007. That year, Apple didn't yet have an app store for its iPhone, stifling the true pote
It wasn't until 2008 that Apple offered a software development kit for third-party coders to make programs for its iPhone. That led to the opening of the official App Store in July 2008. Apple's store grew rapidly, accumulating 65,000 apps and serving over 1.5 billion downloads to date. Many developers abandoned Installer for the more popular App Store, leaving behind an underground space where unauthorized wares could continue to exist. Installer died and became reborn as Cydia, which evolved from an app library into a store in March 2009.
To gain access to Cydia, iPhone owners must jailbreak their smartphones using some
freely available tools
courtesy of the hacker group iPhone Dev-Team. Given the nature of this procedure, it's clear Cydia's primary audience consists of nerdy rebels wishing to utilize the full power of their iPhones, restriction-free.
Cydia's numbers appear small compared to the rare stories we hear about
developers turning into millionaires
with hot sales of their iPhone apps in the App Store. But the idea behind a store like Cydia is that you don't have to be huge to make money. With a smaller market, fewer competitors and a reasonably large customer base, each developer has a higher chance for making a quick buck, Freeman said. Plus, you get more personal attention: Developers submitting their app through Cydia need only contact Freeman, and their app can be made available almost immediately. That's an enticing alternative to Apple's approval process, which can take months and is notoriously opaque: Some App Store developers have faced difficulty
getting answers to simple questions from Apple about their apps
.
