iPhone niche applications

Question

Hi there, we want to develop a small utility for the iPhone for a very small set of users... We're thinking about developing it with PhoneGap/html/javascript as we want to make it available under other mobile platforms.

Given that it's only for a small number of users within a particular organisation, would we submit that to AppStore? Is App Store meant for general public applications?

Any recommendations on how to approach this? thanks

Answer 1

If you're planning to only push out the app to others in your organization, you could enter the Enterprise developer program, which allows you to distribute the apps within your organization for free. Note, that the Enterprise program requires a minimum of 500 employees at your company.

http://developer.apple.com/programs/iphone/enterprise/

You could also join the standard ($99) developer program, which lets you install your app on up to 100 devices through ad-hoc distribution.

Since your app won't need to go through the approval process, like apps headed for the App Store do, you can feel free to use any tools like PhoneGap or MonoTouch to develop your app. Or Xcode of course!

Answer 2

To be explicit, you only have three options:

1. Put your app in the app store - it must pass Apple's review, and will be available to anyone and everyone
2. Use the enterprise program that Ken describes in his answer (No approval process and you can limit distribution, but your company must have 500+ employees)
3. Keep your app inside the browser - i.e. deploy it as a web site instead of an application.

If your company isn't large enough to qualify for the enterprise deal then it sounds like none of those might be precisely what you're hoping for, but unfortunately those are the choices right now.

(Technically there's also a 4th option - a way to distribute an app to a small number of users without using the store or the enterprise program. But that's only supposed to be for testing, and there would be annoyances (if not terms-of-use violations) if you tried to use this as a way to distribute an in-house app.)

Answer 3

If you are thinking about using PhoneGap/html/javascript, why not skip the PhoneGap part, and develop a html/javascript application using some of the WebKit "sugar" to make the application more iPhone friendly, and cache the application on the phone using the HTML5 manifest feature (to minimize load time)?