Can I rent a video using In-App Purchase? - iphone

Can I use In-App Purchase to rent a song from a my webserver, play it once, then ask the user to pay for playing it again. My doubt comes from the developer guidelines, where it is stated in section 11.9 that:
Apps containing "rental" content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected.
How long is a "limited time"?

The in-app purchase type SUBSCRIPTION this can be the solutions.
Subscriptions are one-time services that must be purchased again once the subscription period expires.
like
1. One-month subscriptions
2. Location service subscriptions
Find more for the same over here
This will be help full to you.

Limited time means any definite amount of time.
If you say You can rent this song for 1000 years, the limited time is 1000 years.
Your app is likely to be rejected if you include this mechanism.

I think using consumable product in the in-app will do the trick.

basically you can... according to all of the comments above i will give you a better idea that will not be rejected.
make your in app purchase as a auto-renwable purchase and provide a lot of movies to your subscribers.

Related

Apple - Suspend / refund in-app auto-renewable subscription

I have an iPhone/iPad application that offers a monthly subscription to a service. Although, this service is totally useless during 2 months in the whole year.
Is there any way to either suspend all my users subscription for 2 months, or give them a 2 months refund every year so they don't pay for a useless service ?
After a good talk with an Apple employee, it is not possible to suspend an auto-renewable product.
Also, 0$ subscriptions do not exist outside NewsStand apps for the moment.
In order to solve our problem, we will have to delete the in-app product in iTunes Connect. This will automatically cancel all active subscriptions we have so the users will not be charged for nothing.
A big downside to this solution is that we will lose all current subscribers, so next year we have to build up a new subscriber bank from scratch.
Maybe you can give two months for free to your users instead of refund them.
Have you found any better alternative, since posting your answer about canceling all subscribers every year?
In addition to 1-year subscriptions, apple lets you do other terms as well, including 1-month subscriptions, for both renewable and non-renewable subscriptions.
Maybe you could make your in-app UI look as if the user is signing up for a long-term subscription, but behind the scenes, your app only sends a 1-month non-renewable subscription request to apple. Then, each month, your app automatically requests another 1-month subscription, and another... just skip the months you want to skip.
The user fills out the subscription form in your UI 1 time. Your app logic remembers how many times to start a new 1-month subscription.

Can I give my iPhone App customers referral credits for signing up new subscription customers

In an app that is free, but has in-app subscription purchases I would like to allow a user with a paid subscription to receive x number of free months on top of the paid subscription if he refers someone that purchases a subscription.
For this to work it would have to be possible to track some sort of unique token through the Apple App Store in order to reliably assign credits.
To "Refer a friend" the app would allow the user to send an email to one or more people. This email would contain a link to the app store that also contains a unique key that I would generate to track the lead.
Is this possible?
Our app just got rejected yesterday regarding this kind of functionality.
We had an application which includes yearly subscriptions to access premium features. We also had a way for users to refer 5 friends to get a free access for life to our services. Apple rejected the app stating that this was against their rules for IAP.
Specifically, they referred us to the section 11.1 of the guideline which states :
Apps that unlock or enable additional features or functionality with mechanisms other than the App Store will be rejected
Unfortunately, apple doesn't offer that functionality. One option is to offer 2 different subscriptions - paid and free.
Hide the free subscription portal until they refer someone - then allow them to see the free subscription option.
A couple problems:
The user will have to manually cancel auto-renew on their current paid subscription and then manually sign up for the free subscription.
I don't think you will be able to disable auto-renew on the free subscription option, so it would probably end up being permanent.
You could skip the free subscription official IAP and just make your own time-limited "back door" letting the customer continue downloading subscription content without verifying their App Store receipt. This would still have problem (1) above with the customer needing to manually cancel their auto-renew and then repurchase the subscription when their free time runs out.
My gut tells me this is going to be REALLY hard to pull off in a satisfactory way.
It would be much easier to reward one-time exclusive content for referrals. E.g. Give X for the first, Y after 5 referrals, Z after 10 referrals, etc. This is actually an easier value proposition to present to the users too; make a nice icon or something with an "Invite Friends to Unlock!" call to action.

App with Initial time-limited subscription then Auto-Renewable

I have an app that I plan to introduce soon, but I still have a couple of questions even after reading everything I could find. Maybe I'm just missing the obvious. The App requires a service subscription, because of the server monitoring and analysis required in the background.
I'd like the original App purchase to include a one year subscription to the service and then allow the user to renew (preferably I'd like to use the auto-renew option) towards the end of that period.
Can I just note the in the iTunes Store App description that the purchase includes a one year subscription, then prompt with a renewal notice after that period?
I've seen some comments about offering the App for free with limited usability, then doing an In-App Purchase, but I'd like to avoid having customers downloading the app, going through the initialization steps, but then not subscribing.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Can I just note the in the iTunes Store App description that the purchase includes a one year subscription, then prompt with a renewal notice after that period?
Yes.

Providing In-App Purchase, in a free app

I want to submit a free app with In-App purchase in the Appstore which can be available in all geographies and not restricting to any particular geography.
However,I do not have financial account for all geographies,say, i just have a account in US .So, as i am making the app freely available for all geographies but do not have financial accounts for all geographies,how can a user outside US buy any enhancement through In-App purchase? Does Apple restrict such transactions any way? Or, does Apple reject such applications?
Supposedly,If this app gets approved by apple and goes to app store and any user outside US downloads this app and tries to buy any enhancement using In-App purchase, how will the financial transaction happen?
I may be way off here but doesnt apple handle all the payment transactions themselves? I thought they processed everything, took their 30% cut then gave the developers their share. If that is case, they probably handle the international transactions and give you your share the same way they would any local transaction. It wouldnt make sense for you to have to have accounts all over the world in order to sell an international app.
Also, I dont believe this would have any effect on weather the app is approved or not. Apple wants as many people doing in-app purchases as possible so they can make as much money as possible.

Does the iphone app store provide instant payment notification to a url?

I'm considering posting an app to the iphone app store, but I'm curious before I start paying them for the priviledge of posting the app, whether they provide instant payment notification to a url?
Generally, I've used paypal in the past for applications where right after payment my web site is secretly notified of a purchase. I take this notification, with the users email address and product purchased, to send the purchaser information required for the application.
Is this possible with apple? With the iphone app store? What about the upcoming mac store?
thx
No. Apple handles all contact with the customer, including delivery of the app. At the end of each day, week and month they give you summaries of sales of each product in each country. It's nothing like selling with PayPal. The iOS and Mac App Store are exactly the same in this regard.
The nearest you can get is having your app connect to your server when it first runs, although if you're doing this for no other reason than to track your users, you'll have to check it's allowed under the developer agreement.
First, no, you do not receive instant notification. You can grab a daily report on the web the following early morning (in the US), you can use the free app that Apple provides to retrieve the information, or you can use a variety of third-party tools to do the same.
Second, you will never receive any information whatsoever about the people who buy your app, so no, you can't send purchasers anything.
The Mac App Store appears to use the exact same arrangements.
If you use in-app purchase, you can get an instant notification to your server for the in-app purchase, but not for the initial download of the app.
If you just place a paid app in Apple's App store, you get no direct sales or customer information of any kind, only after-the-fact daily and weekly sales trend estimates, and monthly sales reports a few weeks later. Then Apple then pays you 70% of what they reported up to 45 days after the monthly close. You don't pay them. They pay you. And with over 300K apps in their store, and no other store doing anywhere near as well, they need no privileges granted from any developer. It's more like take it or leave it.