Third party gadget warranty company SquareTrade has decided to expand its user base, now choosing to support jailbroken iPhones. Apple fans, for instance, are strictly forbidden to install third party apps from unauthorised markets, and have their choices restricted to Apple's App Store.

To do otherwise, means iPhone and iPad owners would lose Apple's warranty for the devices. SquareTrade was alerted to users' behaviour and preferences and has announced that owners of jailbroken iPhones are now welcome.

"We actually started covering jailbroken iPhones pretty much after it became an issue," said Vincent Tseng, SquareTrade's VP of strategy. "It was the kind of thing that, once we started getting questions from customers, we made the internal decision to start covering it."

Now, iPad and iPod are also included in this strategy. In a recent interview with CNET, Tseng admitted that the company doesn't have a communication campaign to attract the users using jailbroken devices.

The jailbreak community is relatively small, compared to the population of iPhone and iPad users. SquareTrade officials have explained that the company doesn't want to confuse other users, nor to encourage iPhone jailbreaking.

Source: CNET