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I'm working on an app which acts as a client for our web service. We sell this service to businesses, and we want to distribute the app to their employees for free. The app will be customised for each client.

If we were in the US, my understanding is that we'd ask them to enrol in the volume purchasing program, and submit a version of our app for each business, for enterprise distribution at the free price point

However, the businesses aren't all in the US, so they can't enrol in the VPP. They have thousands of employees, so promo codes won't be sufficient. What are our alternatives?

Simon
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1 Answers1

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The iPad Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) is now available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, UK along with the USA. See https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09042012a and other news sites for more information.

If that is not available, you can use the iOS Enterprise Distribution mechanism. Basically, an organization enrols in the program, the developer supplies them the app then the organization can roll it out internally to all compatibly iOS devices that are enrolled with that organization.

akton
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  • Are you allowed to use Enterprise Distribution to send apps to clients? The documentation only mentions employees. – Simon Sep 06 '12 at 12:41
  • @Simon No. The organization needs to enrol themselves. You cannot use the same enterprise account across multiple organizations. However, enrolment costs $US299 per year so it may be worthwhile to pay some or all of that on behalf of the customer. The program does not actually handle distribution, either. The customer needs a way of installing the app but there are many companies out there that supply that (disclaimer: I work for one of them). – akton Sep 06 '12 at 12:44