Cydia offers alternative to iPhone App Store

Given all the fuss over app stores at the moment, it was only a matter of time before the handset hacker community got involved, with the intent of opening up the iPhone platform to even more developers.

Over the weekend, iPhone hacker Jay Freeman opened the doors of the Cydia Store, an alternative to the Apple App Store, catering to developers who have had their applications vetoed by the Californian firm.

Freeman’s Cydia application is a popular choice among consumers who want to install unapproved applications on their iPhones.

At launch, the Cydia store only housed one application, but Freeman promises more to come in the following days. As with the official App Store, Cydia will offer paid for apps, lending yet more support to the development community.

The Cydia Store uses Amazon as the payment system and authenticates users via Facebook or Google.

According to research released last month, only about 1 per cent of users that download apps from the iPhone App Store continue to use those applications for any length of time.

Pinch Media is a mobile advertising firm that specialises in building campaigns for the iPhone. The company has provided iPhone developers with an analytics engine, which it claims is embedded in “a few hundred” App Store apps, including those that have been in the number one free and paid for slots.

In the last couple of weeks Apple has boasted of the availability of more than 15,000 applications in the App Store with more than 500 million downloads under its belt.