IOS – Purchasing hundreds of consumer App Store apps for employees

enterpriseiosios-appstoremobile-device-management

The question is very simple as the topic suggests. (How) Can a company buy multiple "licenses" of publicly available apps on the App Store (for example paid Angry Birds app) and distribute those to its employees? Does the company get .ipa files directly from the developer (Rovio) and distribute them using the company's iOS Enterprise Developer program? I would say no, because Apple would be omitted in the transaction and in that case, what is the way?

The distribution would by handled by an application called Afaria (which is a client of Afaria Mobile Device Management solution) via its own App portal (more info in iTunes).

I've read about the Volume Purchase Program, however this is not a solution, because I'm in Europe.

If you need more information, please ask. For now, I can't think of more information I can provide.

Best Answer

I suppose I should begin with the caveats that

  • I do not live in Europe so I do not know how things might work there.
  • I do not own or manage a business. So also clueless there.
  • I have not personally ever bought anything other than free apps from the Apple App Store.

So, what I am saying is that I can not answer your question. But I also suffer from Y-chromosome induced Male Answer Syndrome, so I'll try to answer anyway.

Let's start with the assumption that Apple wants to sell you these apps. You just have to track down someone to help you either at Apple or at the company which sells this Afaria app you mentioned.

You do not mention which country in Europe you are in. But I assume there is an Apple web site either for that country or for your native language. I suggest you go to that web site and search there for information on a volume licensing program.

For example, I tried looking at http://www.apple.com/uk/ and searched for volume license.

That search turned up this link: http://www.apple.com/uk/mac/volume-licensing/

Now the page that link took me too appears to apply to volume licensing only for the OS X Lion operating system. Still, the people involved would at least know something about Apple's Volume License process. So, if you were in the UK I would suggest you contact them and start a conversation.

Even if they can't help you they could still probably point you towards other Apple people who might be able to help you.

I suggest you try something like that with the Apple web site which targets your region in Europe.

I realize this would be a tedious and frustrating process. And I hope someone else provides a better answer to your question here. But unless they do, I think your best chance of solving your problem is to start working you way through people at Apple who would want to sell you something help you.

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