iPhone app with or without AppStore

Question

My company is offering a service to our clients which we would like to implement on iphone. Our clients would be paying $5000 per month for the service, so they can give it free of charge to their customers. We have been looking (so far with no success) for a distribution method where we can sell our service to our clients, and they can give it to their customers, without charging the end users and without paying the 30% distribution fees to Apple.

We did our research and found that non of the convenient solutions would work for us:

• Putting the app for free download on the App store, protecting it with user/password and charging our clients remotely may violate the App Store terms and conditions.

• Ad hoc development would be insufficient as we are aiming towards over 10K downloads on different client devices.

• And the Enterprise solution is for internal distribution in US companies with more than 500 employees (and we are not using it internally, we are outside US and currently have only 5 employees :)

Your help would be much appreciated!

Daniel

Answer 1

The first solution could be envisaged as the best one but is not compliant with Apple Term Of Agreement.

The idea would be:

• sell freely (to avoid 30%) your application thru the app store
• sell a subscription directly to your client

To be compliant you need to:

• sell a subscription also as an in app purchase to be compliant with Apple Terms (would be never used in your case). It has changed since June, 30 2011 (BlogArticle & MacRumors) and you can found official text there : [AppleTerms] (requires a developer account)
• don't put any button to get a subscription within your application and avoid text like buy or something like that in the deployed application.

11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app.

[AppleTerms]:https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ (requires a developer account)

Answer 2

Apple Terms has been updated.

• If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than IAP.

• Any credits or in-game currencies purchased via IAP must be consumed within the app and may not expire, and you should make sure you have a restore mechanism for any restorable in-app purchases. Remember to assign the correct purchasability type or your app will be rejected.

• Apps should not directly or indirectly enable gifting of IAP content, features, or consumable items to others.

• Apps distributed via the Mac App Store may host plug-ins or extensions that are enabled with mechanisms other than the App Store.

you can look at : https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Answer 3

Another possibility is to do a HTML5 web app which can run stand-alone on the device as a web clipping. Then your clients could distribute the app directly from their own web site(s), either behind a paywall or password protected page or not.

The Financial Times did this (convert from an app store app to a web app) to avoid Apple's app store restrictions on certain types of subscriptions.