The main use-case I can see for something like CocoaPods actually has to do with commercial library code---i.e. code that you purchase and for which you get proper support.
I'll also add this: CocoaPods, as it stands today, also creates a risk, in that it's possible that an updated version of some library you're depending on might have a different license---maybe one that's incompatible with the license for the software you're working on. As far as I can tell, CocoaPods has no mechanism to deal automatically with this issue, which makes its use in commercial projects dangerous IMO.