While Google Android is more closely associated with the hacking/tinkering community, the Apple jailbreak community is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, this is getting so big that Toyota has created a custom theme for Cydia in order to promote its Scion to the iPhone jailbreak community.
The iPhone jailbreak community is difficult to quantify and part of that is because of the fact that new versions of the software can break the jailbreak (at least momentarily). The folks over at Modmyi talked to the Cydia team and found these guys are seeing 4-5 million unique visits a week and estimates that there are 10-15 million jailbroken iDevices out there.
10-15 million devices aren’t that much when you consider that some are expecting the iPhone 5 to sell 100 million units on its own. Still, that’s a good chuck on users and it’s not much of a surprise that Toyota is reaching out to them, as it has been angling its Scion at this type of demographic.
Will we see more mainstream brands reach out to the iPhone jailbreak community? I don’t think so, as this runs the risk of really cheesing off Apple and most companies don’t want to do that.
Apple would much rather companies like Toyota use its sanctioned platforms to reach iOS users. This includes the App Store and the iAd platform – this gives Apple a chance to get a cut out of any of the revenues, as well as keep a steady hand in the experience.
Do you think more companies should be reaching out to these types of users? On the one hand, you could argue that this is a certain type of user which may not take well to mainstream advertising. On the other hand, I’d say that this is also a highly-technical audience that definitely has some cash to spend, too.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
[Via Modmyi]