Do I really need a B2B - Developer is himself the Customer for iOS app

Question

I need to develop an application for a Client who later wish to install this app, customize iPad wallpaper and some other stuff to suit to business needs and send it to his Customers.

The tricky part is I can not suggest him to distribute this application via Adhoc Distribution (Using Normal 100 device limitation account) as He says apple itself is one of their potential customers.

Enterprise Distribution isn't required for reasons that His company does not entitles for this developer program.

Now my question is If I go for B2B distribution model - The end user are essentially not the one who will download the application rather my client himself will do that and give them preinstalled application on iPad.

What options do I have here ? Any help suggestion will be appreciated. I have already gone through the various volume Purchase programs documentation but I could not figure out if B2B distribution exactly matches my requirement or not.

Answer 1

So, let's see if I'm understanding this:

• You are making an app for someone else. We'll call you the 'developer'.
• Your customer is paying you to build that app. We'll call them the 'publisher'.
• The publisher will not be selling to the public, they will instead be installing the app on devices, configuring them and then selling the entire solution (i.e. device and pre-installed app) to their customers (we'll call them 'end users').

Yes? And since one of the publisher's potential end users is Apple, you have a heightened sense of compliance with the rules (which you should be doing anyway).

So in this case, the publisher distributes the app via the B2B model and makes themselves the party it is allowed to be sold to, restricting the availability to those devices. This will require the publisher to create an Apple ID to manage their VPP participation.

Now, that's assuming the end users aren't going to be using these iPads for other functions. If they are, then you'd need to allow those users direct access and perhaps re-figure the business model a bit. That would also allow the end-users to re-install the app if they needed to, etc...

This PDF described the process in more detail: http://images.apple.com/business/docs/vpp_business_guide_en_20130413.pdf