for a client, I have been developing an app which has been tailored to make their employees every day lives easier. Think of it as a calendar designed to fit the needs of their special business.
Now it turns out that other companies in the business are interested in the very same solution too. My client suggested we could sell the app on the appstore.
Since the app is equally useful for companies with hundreds of employees as it is for a team of five, I wonder what would be the best way to sell it.
It is my understanding that a company, once they purchased one copy of the app, may install it on as many devices as they want, as long as they use the devices with the same iTunes account. This is especially true if the company would equip their employees with new devices for the purpose, like my client did. Right?
This is obviously not what I want, I’d rather like to charge a small price per device. Usually, this would cry for a volume license, which is not part of the appstore concept, except for educational institutions.
Now I am looking for a convenient way to achieve something with the same effect.
I was thinking about checking the UDID of the device against a whitelist on my server to allow each purchased license to run on just one device, while allowing migration of course.
To enable a company to purchase a “volume license”, I would offer packs of additional licenses via In-App-Purchases, as well as individual licenses. The app itself would be free while featuring only demo capabilities, full functionality would be available after assigning the device to one of the purchased licenses. Means to manage licenses would be included within the app.
What do you guys think? Any technical reasons why this concept could fail?
Do you know of examples that actually implement something similar?
Any other ideas how to sell apps in volume? Maybe there are even some examples on how to implement something like this?
Do you think apple would approve this kind of use of in-app-purchases? (I know this last question is not of a kind that can be answered here without uncertainty, but let me hear what your gut feeling tells you..)
This question has been flagged as being off-topic twice, so I think I should back up the fact that I am mainly interested in a technical solution (and emphasized the important sub-questions accordingly). Of course I am interested in whether apple allows the proposed use of their appstore, however before I contemplate that further I need to know if there are technical caveats to my approach. I would love to offer code snippets to support the technical nature of my inquiry, however I’m just planning things so there is no code yet…
While the core question is still business-related here, and thus off topic, I’ll bite.
The standard App Store end user license agreement has this wording:
Therefore, if you consult the “App Store Product Usage Rules” section of the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions, you see this wording:
The rules are quite explicit about commercial enterprises not being allowed to just purchase one copy and install it on all devices at that company.
It is for this reason that Apple offers volume discounts for applications purchased in bulk (where the developer has checked the box in iTunes Connect allowing for this). I can’t find the business equivalent, but here’s Apple’s page on the educational bulk discount program.
While I could see how you could use in-app purchase to activate functionality in an application and make sure that it was properly licensed, I’ve heard complaints about the practical difficulties of deploying applications using this in educational and business settings. Many applications use this approach for free Lite versions that upsell into the full paid application, so Apple has no problem with this.
One thing I do recommend is that you not abuse the ad hoc distribution system to do any licensing workarounds. The last time some geniuses did this caused Apple to clamp down on everyone’s ad hoc licenses and make our lives more difficult.