I got an email newsletter yesterday from the excellent Pinch Media site, which provides a range of tracking and analytical services for iPhone developers, as well as some great RSS feeds for keeping up with new and updated iPhone apps.
One thing that caught my eye right away was a couple of charts that showed %ages of Jailbroken vs Non-Jailbroken phones. Apparently Pinch Media gets asked a lot about this subject, and I know it is one that has always made me curious.
The first chart – shown at the top of this post – looked at unique users. The second one shows sessions.
The percentages, in both cases, are of ‘the over ten million devices using any of thousands of applications running Pinch Analytics’ – for the week of 5/17/09 (i.e last week).
Obviously, these numbers don’t cover all iPhone OS devices, or usage of all apps – but they seem to me like a big enough batch, covering a large number of popular apps, to be fairly representative.
The %age of jailbroken phones initially struck me as quite low – at less than 10% in both charts. Then I thought about the fact that I spend a lot of time on iPhone forums and sites like this one, where the majority of readers and users are perhaps not ‘typical’ iPhone users, but much more like power users, who are much more likely to have at least dabbled with jailbreaking.
What do you all think? Does below 10% seem low to you? Maybe a quick straw poll if anyone wants to play – are you jailbroken? Or have you ever been?
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Jailbroken and proud! I don't need Apple telling me what I can and cannot put on my phone. That's my business (& right), not theirs!!!!
Just testing a comment when not logged in …
I finally jailbroke, but of the dozen or more people I know with iPhones, only one other is jailbroken.
Have not jailbroke my iPhone. Have jailbroke my ipod touch… unjailbroke it as there aren't enough reasons to JB.
I am still supprised no one has been able to find a way to build an app & distribute it outside "official" channels to be dropped into iTunes & synced to the iPhone.
I'm jailbroken but most of the people I know that have an iPhone are not. I think the 10% number is probably fairly accurate. I personally couldn't live without certain apps like iRealQuickSMS, SBSettings, Five Icon Dock, and Backgrounder. Intelliscreen would be on that list but I got tired of my phone running slower than a dog and crashing constantly.
Of course there are other huge advantages to jailbreaking. Some of which will be in 3.0 but probably not as elegant or free (xGPS, PDAnet, etc.).
Intelliscreen & Winterboard are the only JB apps I've seen that I REALLY wish apple would allow someone to build for the iphone. cut & paste is finally being addressed, as is mms. It's awesome that the most advanced phone on the planet is updating to 2001 standards. I'd rather use a true gps (which I already own) for turn by turn directions & google maps has served me fine on foot. I would like to see a way to allow USER SELECTABLE background apps, but, I want to be able to decide what is allowed to run background as well as when it is allowed.
Joe
Question: This poll… does it mean the total amount of users that were jailbroken for that week or total that used Cydia that week?
Example.. if I used Cycorder that I d/led three months ago, does this chart show it as long as I am using it currently? Or does this show only those users d/ling it and/or using Cydia for that week?
Just Me – I'm not sure the answers to those questions. The stats are based on thousands of apps that use Pinch Analytics – it looks to me like the first one might include you, but the second might not, if Cycorder is even one of the ones that uses that tracking app.
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