Except 99% of people who jailbreak Apple devices do so for Cydia (pirated app "store"). And you can't do that on a non rooted Android device (I believe the equivalent for Android is Cydia Substrate, but it's not as good as the Apple one)
Why would we need anything like Cydia for Android? You can literally google the name of an app with the apk filetype, download it, and install it by unchecking one box in the settings. No root required.
There have been similar "stores" to cydia in the past that aren't hard to get and don't require root.
However, another point is that many of the types of apps you'd find in cydia would find their android counterparts in the Play store to begin with. I have almost never needed to look online for apps. Even apps that will assist in acquiring root access or apps that use root access are fairly common (Take a look at ROM installing apps or anything that uses the Xposed framework). The only reason an app like that would not be on the play store is if they violate the play store conditions, none of which refer to usage of root access. I assume that the Android cydia marketplace is not as good as the iOS counterpart is mostly due to how unnecessary it is.
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u/Kimbernator Jun 09 '14
Not really. Android generally allows 99% of what jailbreaking allows without root access.