While some might have more pure and noble reasons for jailbreaking an iOS device or rooting an Android one, it’s safe to assume that many people do it for the free apps. By jailbreaking/rooting your device, you will have to ability to downloaded pirated apps instead of having to pay for it, and that’s generally the perception people have when you tell them that you jailbroke or rooted your device, even though you might have just done it for customizability and still pay for apps. That being said, Cydia is an app store alternative for jailbroken iOS devices and it has been revealed that during JailbreakCon 2012, Jay “saurik” Freeman came forward and stated that Cydia developers were paid a pretty impressive sum of $8 million in 2011.
Granted this pales in comparison to Apple’s iTunes App Store, it just goes to show that not all jailbreakers or rooters are pirates! For those unfamiliar, the Cydia store is an app store alternative to the official iTunes App Store. It provides jailbroken iOS users access to apps (free and paid) that might not necessarily meet Apple’s strict guidelines either due to content being inappropriate, or having features that can only be taken advantage of on a jailbroken device.