I have developed five apps with name of five different football teams. Which shows event schedule of respective team. Apple rejected all of them and giving reason
"Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program"
Now, I have seen following Apps are almost same and available on AppStore
http://itunes.apple.com/pk/app/brookwood-medical-center/id434593012?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/pk/app/doctors-hospital-of-manteca/id430928072?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/pk/app/doctors-medical-center-modesto/id447790452?mt=8
Now what is developer spamming? Anybody can explain it?
It is not a technical question, but it is probably related to your code, so :
I think Apple rejects your applications for that reason when you use the same code base (or a close code base) for multiple applications, presented as different apps.
they must be thinking your are creating the same app under different names to gain more visibility in the store.
You should contact them and try to explain your case, or change your apps code and UI significantly enough to prove them these apps are different.
Create one football app and allow the user to buy teams as in app purchases.
Let the user have one team included in the price of the app.
Now, I have seen following Apps are almost same and available on AppStore
This is a common mistake. You can not use the existence of apps in the iOS App Store as any sort of precedent. These apps may have been accepted by accident, or under a previous interpretation of Apple's rules, which will not apply to your submissions.
Go by the current interpretation of the App store guidelines.
Maybe sell your apps to the respective teams so that you won't be submitting multiple apps, or running into any trademark licensing problems.
"Developer spamming" as explained by App Store Review Guidelines:
Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar apps
will be removed from the iOS Developer Program
Related
I have five iphone apps which have similar interface/functionality but for the use of five different business persons.They are doing same type of business. So the similarity in app. The app will be free to use by public.
Apple says
1. Apps which appear confusingly similar to an existing Apple product or advertising theme will be rejected
2. Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program.
3. Apps that look similar to apps bundled on the iPhone, including the App Store, iTunes Store, and iBookstore, will be rejected.
Is these guidelines applicable for apps under enterprise app deployment ? Is it possible publish apps under Ad-hoc mode and give link of the app through another website?
if your app is same interface functionality. just add a db to it for different people. No need to publish it more than once. and issue regarding duplication on apstore, they already have billions of apps so no care for what purpose your app is. just differentiate the database as your goal is manage users separately.
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I work for a company that would like to create an app that we can distribute to our customers. We manufacture industrial equipment and we would like to provide an iPhone/iPad app to our customers that can interact with their equipment.
The problem is that we would prefer that the app not be downloaded from the App Store. We would like for this application to be available for our customers free-of-charge and would also like for them to have the ability to download and install the application on as many devices as they desire. However, we do not want non-customers (ahem, competitors) to be able to download and use our application.
What options are available? We have considered allowing the app to be available through the app store but in that case the app would be locked until the user entered an application key. This would keep the app free to download and it would give us the ability to control who could use our software. I'm not sure, however, if that is allowable by the Apple TOS.
The Enterprise license sounds like a potential option. If it is, what are the specific steps necessary for installing an iOS app on an Apple device if not through the App Store? I'm also not sure if it would break the TOS to distribute our app for this purpose under the Enterprise license. Is that the case?
What options do I have? Please realize, I don't own a Mac and I've never even attempted to write or distribute an iOS application-- I'm 100% new to all of this. Thanks for you help.
EDIT
Thank you all for the wonderful responses that I have so far received. Half of the questions that I have stem from the fact that I can't find the actual TOS agreement that I would have to sign if I became a standard or enterprise developer. (Yes, I've googled it.) Does anyone have a link to such documents?
If you want to distribute your app outside the App Store, you need to get an iOS Developer Entreprise license ($299/year). You're going to need a Dun & Bradstreet (D-U-N-S) number to enroll and can only deploy to 500 (registered) devices.
Edit: Another option would be to demand the user some authentication (such as user/pass) to use the app (think Facebook or Twitter). You could provide your clients with the credentials to ensure only a certain users have access to the app.
I think #ibeitia's answer is the best one, but here's an additional option: put the app on the app store, but make it all-but-useless without a login to your server.
For example, the Google+ app is useless unless you have a Google account.
You'd have to give a login to Apple so they can vet it, and of course I can't guarantee they'll allow it, but it's an option I'd consider.
(If you do go down that route, send an email to Apple's approval team asking for clarification before you start development!)
I work for a company that would like to create an app that we can
distribute to our customers.
From http://developer.apple.com/support/ios/enterprise.html (bold is mine)
I am a developer who wants to create an in house app for my client.
Can I join the iOS Developer Enterprise Program to do that?
The iOS Developer Enterprise Program should be used to develop and
distribute proprietary in-house applications to your own employees
within your own company. As such, your company would not qualify for
direct Program enrollment in this situation. We would suggest that
your client apply for enrollment in the Program, and, once enrolled in
the Program, your client may add the appropriate developers from your
company to their iOS Development Team.
The Enterprise Developer program doesn't allow you to sell your app to your customers. It's the customer, not you, who should enroll in the program.
I think your best bet will be to use Apple's B 2 B program:
http://www.apple.com/business/vpp/
This will allow you to have apps in Apple's business app store (not the ordinary app store), and control who gets the apps. You'd provide the redemption codes to your customers.
btw, I can confirm that providing an app with a login to make it useful would be okay with Apple - I've done it before.
Well your options are really limited.
You could go with the enterprise license but this is still limited to 500 device which still need to be register with the some how. (never had to work with the enterprise license).
But could you not make your app available in the appstore foor free but only make it work with you equipment. Thus make the app search for the equipment (via bonjour of wifi) and only work when it finds the device. This will make getting the accepted a bit harder but will work. There are some IP camera manager that work that way.
If your competitors really want your app they will get it one way or an other.
Just be sure you release an app before the competitors, do that way your company has the advantage.
I'm going to develop an iPhone app, and want to make sure what I want to do is possible, and will be approved by Apple.
I'm going to create an app that will be fully branded on per submission basis. I want to have one app per customer (our customers are companies) with their logo, skin, etc.
This apps will be downloaded and installed by the employees of each one of our customers.
In other words, we would use the same base code (logic doesn't change), but will brand it for each customer. Something similar to what Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/product/mobile) does, they created an Ecommerce mobile app, and they brand it to their customer, but the app logic remains the same.
Would Apple consider this as duplicate apps? what is the best way to do it?
Thanks in advance.
I would have said "no problem" until I read:
This apps will be downloaded and
installed by the employees of each one
of our customers
It sounds like what your creating is (a set of) private applications, which are intended to be targeted only to specific users - i.e. employees of the company.
Apple has a separate "enterprise" development program geared towards this - allowing developers to deploy programs for their own company - and do it outside of the App Store.
If your program is very specific towards the companies, Apple may make you do this - rather than putting the Apps up for general consumption on the App store.
See here for more details:
http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/
Also:
If your application is really intended for a wider audience, and your could in-fact sell/distribute it a such - you could "skin" the app dynamically. For example, on first-time launch, when you "register" with some "service" - based upon your email address it could download the appropriate skinning graphics.
I can say I know of several companies built on this strategy. The code doesn't change one iota from app to app, only images and names change and they continue to bring in revenue.
EDIT: Note this is against apple policy and if they find out they have been known to ban accounts. They consider it spamming and prefer that you sell one app that provides in app purchases. Directly from their feedback on a particular group of app submissions:
Thank you for submitting your
Photography apps to the App Store.
We've completed the review of your
apps, however, we are unable to post
them to the App Store because they
provide the same feature set and
simply vary the content. Apps that
replicate functionality with different
content create clutter in the App
Store, hindering users' ability to
find apps, and do not comply with the
App Store Review Guidelines
https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html:
2.20 Developers 'spamming' the App Store with many versions of
similar apps will be removed from the
iOS Developer Program
You can now use Apple's Volume Purchase Program to release differently branded versions of the same app to different customers. The app can be free or paid. Each customer must have a DUNS number (Dun & Bradstreet). See the FAQ for details.
When a single developer releases multiple apps, do they register the apps under different company names?
What's the most iPhone apps released by a single developer that you know of?
During your submission of the first app in app store, you have to enter your company name. It can be different from the name which is used to create the developer account. Once created, you can not change this company name, that is any future app from that developer account will have that company name.
This was the scenario at least at the start of this year. I don't know whether this policy is changed now (little possibility of changing).
I have at least 200+ apps in the store. Admittedly, most developers would refer to them as Shovelware. However, that is not my intent, and I go to great lengths to prevent that. As far as I know, Apple doesn't have a limit on the number of apps. Note though, that the latest Apple App Approval changes have a clause about developers spamming the store with similar apps. The practice is frowned upon. Also, all of our apps are under one company name.
Hope that helps.
I have some questions that I think some one here can help me ...
I have published 5 apps in AppStore that brings news to the users, for different countries. One app per country, because no one want's to read the news of other countrys. Now, I have submitted 3 more apps to publish and Apple reject it, because they say that I need to use "In App Purchase" because the apps are similar ...
I have seen many similar apps published by the same user .. so, my question is, how can I publish many similar apps without "In App Purchase"?
I have used the same "bundle Id" for all of my apps .. Is it wrong? I need the create one bundle Id per app to get this work and the ok by Apple?
Thanks you very much and sorry for my limited english!!
Since Apple released the App Store Review Guidelines, one of them is that developers should not "spam" the app store with multiple versions of the same app with minor changes.
What Apple wants from you right now is to merge all your apps into one. Put all the news sources in one app, and let the user decide which to read. You can write code to disable and/or hide other news sources that the user doesn't want to see.
Or, as Apple said, if you want to charge for each individual news source, then use In-App purchase to control access to each news source.
If you are charging, I won't get into the legality of charging people to read news that you don't own - I'm sure you've considered that.
Source: App Store Review Guidelines
2.20 Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program
At least you need to create unique bundle ID's for each application you distribute through the App Store.
It is possible that Apple still determines that the apps are identical even if they use different bundle ID's. In that case you might be able to get them approved by limiting the distribution countries in the store setup.
Maybe you should follow Apple's advice.
I know plenty of people who like to keep informed about news of other countries.
Such as people who have migrated and people who are on holiday?
Something to consider maybe.