Today’s blog is going to be a bit different. Instead of providing answers, I am going to be asking some questions. Reading this very interesting article on iPhone piracy, I learned that only 5-10% of iPhone owners have “jailbreaked” their phone. Honestly, this didn’t really surprise me, not knowing a single iPhone owner amongst my amazingly geeky bunch of friends who had done a “jailbreak”. (For those of you who don’t know, “jailbreaking” is the equivalent of unlocking (see yesterday’s blog for more on that 
).
However, if you were to tell me that only 5-10% of Android owners had unlocked their device, my jaw would drop to the floor. So here is question number one: how many Android device owners have unlocked their phone? And a corollary question: how many Nexus One owners have unlocked and rooted their phone? I imagine the first number would be significantly higher than 5-10% and I wouldn’t be surprised if the second number was over 50%. (Am I over-estimating the Android and Nexus one communities desire to unlock their phone?)
So assuming the numbers are higher, why? What is it that leads the owners of Android phones to be more willing to hack their phones? Is is that hackers are more attracted to the open source nature of Android? Is it that iPhone owners are sheep? What do you think???
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Simple. Apple is actively trying to stop jailbreaking and u need to keep an eye on apple’s actions. Google almost encourages rooting and even works with some rom builders. I don’t root my nexus one only because unlike apple, google doesn’t disable most of the features I need. (Multitasking, custom sound notifications, drag and drop file management, etc.)
I think the numbers should be similar or at most, slightly higher on Android/N1. The thing is, I feel like jailbreaking is easier than rooting. However, jailbreaking is more needed than rooting.