Our business is currently looking at developing iPhone versions of applications we build for our clients. The apps are currently used internally within these businesses and are not (currently) web-facing.
A stumbling block seems to be deployment – requiring all of our clients to sign up for the iPhone enterprise programme won’t work, as this is a big ask for companies who outsource their IT infrastructure (e.g. this simple task will probably end up costing lots of time and money and become a project in itself!).
I’ve been doing some research and haven’t found a straight answer so far – is Apple happy to distribute applications which require logins to existing (paid for, business) services? I guess my main examples in this case would be spotify (not business but requires paid account) or Salesforce.com (again, requires paid account).
While there are many examples of it being allowed (Spotify, Twitter and Facebook clients, etc.), here’s one which Apple rejected for requiring registration:
http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-rejected-new-rejection-reason-from-apple-may-have-major-implications/
However many people on Hacker News considered this to be a mistake on the reviewer’s part, rather than something in Apple’s guidelines:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626034