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Comment by jpcx01 | Hacker News Reader

Hopefully Cydia will gain traction. I've bought a couple apps on it already and its been a positive experience.

It has the potential to be huge, however no VC firm will touch it since it also has the potential to be sued out of existence. I doubt it will have the resources to build things up enough where it can scale up and get a mainstream marketshare.

Android seems to be the only real alternative to Apple's appstore madness. I'll definitely be supporting that platform in the future. Getting an iPhone 3g last year was a really boneheaded move.

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I'm positive about Cydia as well as there will be more and more frustrated users and developers turning to the store. Additionally big publications like CNN, Wired and lots of blogs are writing about it.

The question is really how long the store will last, or, how long jailbreakers can win against iPhone software updates. Unlikely but maybe Apple finds a way to keep them of doing so.

Yes, I think the Android market is interesting as more and more companies are distributing their phones with pre-installed Android, especially in China.

It doesn't really have the potential to be huge - yes there are a lot of iPhones out there, but they are not all potential Cydia users. You need people who are technical enough to jailbreak, interested enough to jailbreak, willing to do some care and maintenance and maybe re-jailbreak every time an upgrade is released and who are unhappy with the AppStore.

Given that the marketing for the iPhone is about how easy to use it is and how comprehensive the AppStore is, the iPhone target market is pretty much entirely excluding the Cydia market. The crossover is a chance happening that geeky people like the iPhone too, and the iPhone is actually a nice gadget dressed up as a phone.

I think you're oversimplifying the divide between geeky and non-geeky people. Or, to be more specific, you'd be surprised at the lengths "non-geeky" people would go to to get what they want. "You mean I can get more free apps for my iPhone? Show me!!"

"You mean I have to go to this ad-infested site and follow this long list of instructions? All for something I'll use once and forget about?"

I could be, bug if you change that to 'the lengths they will go to to get another way to pay for apps' does it still hold? There would have to be a killer app there...

Technically speaking, jailbreaking an iPhone now consists of clicking a button and rebooting the phone - tasks which I am pretty sure you don't have to be 'technical enough' to do.

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