Private iPhone apps?

Question

Hello, i would be interested in writing apps that connect to intranets or extranet. In other words i would like to make private apps for my clients but if the only way to sell apps is the AppStore this can be downloaded by everyone and this is bad. Do you know if there is a way to distribute enterprise apps only to a certain number of persons? Btw, does Android runs in the same way? Thanks and greetings!

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this, just read the Apple Developer Documentation on Enrollment on the Apple website. All the details on what and how you can deploy something are listed in plain sight and text when you sign up as a developer. And they are accurate unlike some of these answers which may or may not be correct for a given time.

Answer 2

I've been looking into this too. I don't think there's a good way to do this with objective-c, but I do believe this can be done well with HTML5.

I'm reading this book http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/

The iPhone supports the web databases, offline apps, and with the webkit part you get icons so your app can look like a real iphone app and be distributed from a web site.

I don't know much about Android...

Answer 3

The answer is.... sort of. You can create ad hoc distribution, but you are limited to 100 total devices in your list. So, 100 customers. Or, you can sign up for an enterprise license, but to do so your company must have 500 employees (there may be other restrictions there too).

[edit]
One suggestion might be to create your application as SaaS - and charge for the connection/data store
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Answer 4

The iPhone Enterprise Developer Program is targeting exactly this scenario. It allows building and distributing apps outside of the AppStore. It does cost $299 instead of $99, however; and it's available for companies with 500+ employees and Dun&Bradstreet number only. If you are small shop working for big clients, you might want to talk with them enorolling in that program so you can develop the app for them.