iPhone app without AppStore

Question

We have an industrial app that currently runs on a very expensive ruggedized PDA. Since most of the engineers we sell to have iPhones we are considering moving to the much nicer newer platform.

A couple of questions: Is it possible to sell iPhone apps with out the app store? Apple taking a 40% cut of a 99c iFart app is one thing but this is a $3000 engineering calculation app. We have also heard of the hassles some people have had getting apps approved.

Can we sell an iPod touch (I understand selling an iPhone without a contract is trickier) with pre-packaged software.

ps. Sorry for the anonymous posting, the company is a little nervous about our relationship with the PDA maker.

Answer 1

You can give the app for free in Appstore, but it will require an online activation. The online activation will cost 3000$. If apple would not accept the app, you can try to create a very limited version (without activation) and get it accepted in appstore. Then release un update for it, which will enable online activation system.

Answer 2

Testflight. Google it. Basically you get an account with testflight. Put your app on testflight. You send your customer an email and they click it on their iphone. It sends testflight an email with your customers device ID. Testflight sends you an email saying "a New customer requested your app" and their device ID. You add their device ID to your provisioning chain and rebuild your App. Upload it to testflight, they get a notification that it's ready, and they can install it. Somewhere in there be sure to get your money :)

Answer 3

If it was me I would do one of the follow:

1) Submit it to Apple and sell it for free. They then enter a license code bought from you to access the full feature set. Include a welcome page, about us, contact page for unlicensed functionality. As Apple won't approve it if it does nothing.

2) Get the companies you're selling to to open an Enterprise account with Apple. Then you build the IPA and sign it using their credentials and send them the IPA.

Good luck.

Answer 4

Native app, no. However, you can create it as a Web App that's specialized for the iPhone, in which case you circumvent the app store altogether.

Answer 5

You have to jailbreak the iPhone to put an app on it not from the app store.

Answer 6

This article summarizes all the answers to this question and discusses Apple's B2B, iOS developer enterprise program, adhoc distribution and testflight.

http://mobiledan.net/2012/03/02/5-options-for-distributing-ios-apps-to-a-limited-audience-legally/

All of the solutions (except the test-oriented solutions, which are limited), however, force you to get Apple's approval before publishing and updating. This process can take time and can leave your users stranded when you have a critical bug that needs a quick update.

If this is a deal breaker for you, you might want to try developing the app for Android, which also has advantages and drawbacks, but in your specific case, gives you more flexibility.

In Android, you can email an APK file, a user clicks it, and the app gets installed on the device.

In iOS, every devices that is not a member of the "enterprise program", "b2b" program or is provisioned for testing, cannot install the app.