Cydia Buys Rock - Will Become Your Unique Source Of Jailbreak Apps
September 12, 2010
Cydia, the jailbreak App Store, is without a doubt the symbol of jailbreaking. Yet, it wasn't the only player selling apps that weren't approved by Apple. Rock, a second App Store, has had some success of its own over its 18 months of existence.
Besides the different application and interface (Rock's was superior IMHO), it was essentially the same thing. You could find most apps on both stores, and while some apps were Cydia or Rock only, there was usually an alternative app on the other store. Yet, for many of us, we had to rely on two jailbreak stores, each with their own set of credentials, and clearly it was a bit of a hassle.
Well, times have changed. Saurik, Cydia's creator, has now acquired Rock and will merge it into Cydia. As a result, all apps, licenses and so on will be moved from Rock to Cydia over the next couple of days. This will bring the total number of available jailbreak apps, themes and extensions to over 20,000. As for Rock, it will be shut down.
The news, while welcome, comes as a bit of a surprise as Cydia and Rock didn't always cooperate well in the past. They apparently came to an agreement, and you can now even see the flagship Rock apps featured on Cydia's main page. Here is what Cydia's creator told ModmyI about the acquisition:
It's been a fun ride. We set out to change the landscape and I think we were very successful. I think we contributed to attracting more business professionals to the iPhone jailbreak community, and added some great functionality to the platform. The current transaction with Cydia is a great opportunity for us. We're going to miss some of the excitement, but no reason for anyone to worry. I, personally, will be spending even more time in Intelliborn apps development (both existing and exciting new projects). A few months ago, Jay and I sat down together and we realized, I enjoyed making apps more (and was better at it), while Jay enjoys providing platform functionality. It was a win-win for both groups and we're excited about the transition.Rock's creator posted some interesting statistics on the site to show us just how successful the service was:
- Number of Developers with apps listed in the Rock Store: 124 (from 19 countries)
- Unique iOS devices that installed Rock: 4.6 million (from 220 countries/territories) - Wow that is a lot of places!
- Registered Rock Users: 2+ million
- Number of App licenses sold: 500,000
- Users of who took the plunge and bought something: 280,000 (from 185 countries)
- Total Rock Your Phone Store revenue (March 12th, 2009 - September 2010): $3.3+ million
- Number of Rock Employees (we are using the word employee loosely here but, hey, it is our company)