Student Makes $50,000 Jailbreaking iPhones

[Maura]

The Washington Post has a very interesting article about how much money can be made from jailbreaking iPhones. The feature focuses on a George Mason University senior called Kevin Lee, who claims to earn $50,000 a year for jailbreaking iPhones, a service that he advertises via Craigslists.

“When I first started, I did it for my friends, myself, but it has snowballed from there,” Lee told The Washington Post. “I was getting five to ten customers a week, now it’s 30 to 40. I just had one customer from the Mongolian embassy who was moving to the capital of Mongolia, and he wanted to use the iPhone there.”

The Washington Post goes on to say that the Cydia store earns approximately $10 million per year, and has around 4.5 million active users per week looking for apps for their jailbroken iPhones. Developers are also making tens of thousands of dollars from selling apps for jailbroken phones. The Post also talked to Jay Freeman, the 29-year-old founder and operator of Cydia, who had this to say about Cydia and jailbreaking in general:

“The whole point is to fight against the corporate overlord. This is grass-roots movement, and that’s what makes Cydia so interesting. Apple is this ivory tower, a controlled experience, and the thing that really bought people into jailbreaking is that it makes the experience theirs.”

Source: Once the hobby of tech geeks, iPhone jailbreaking now a lucrative industry - The Washington Post, via MacStories

 

[scophone]

The iphone at such high price when I can afford

 

[Gregoris]

lol lots of cash to be made from charging to jailbreak and/or unlock and lots of people seem to be making thousands from doing it.

also those cydia figures are amazing even big companies are all for it, ever one seems to be fighting apple on this yet apple will never change their mind