Distributing business app on App Store that requires an account [closed]

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Our bu开发者_开发问答siness is currently looking at developing iPhone versions of applications we build for our clients. The apps are currently used internally within these businesses and are not (currently) web-facing.

A stumbling block seems to be deployment - requiring all of our clients to sign up for the iPhone enterprise programme won't work, as this is a big ask for companies who outsource their IT infrastructure (e.g. this simple task will probably end up costing lots of time and money and become a project in itself!).

I've been doing some research and haven't found a straight answer so far - is Apple happy to distribute applications which require logins to existing (paid for, business) services? I guess my main examples in this case would be spotify (not business but requires paid account) or Salesforce.com (again, requires paid account).

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While there are many examples of it being allowed (Spotify, Twitter and Facebook clients, etc.), here's one which Apple rejected for requiring registration:

http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2010/08/version-2-2-rejected-new-rejection-reason-from-apple-may-have-major-implications/

However many people on Hacker News considered this to be a mistake on the reviewer's part, rather than something in Apple's guidelines:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626034

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Is Apple happy to distribute applications which require logins to existing (paid for, business) services?

Yes, there are very many examples:

• Amazon.co.uk and all the other shopping apps might be examples
• Streetcar
• iDisk (by Apple)
• Find My iPhone (by Apple)
• Sky+
• ...

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Sklivvz is right, the only gotcha is they will already need a login to your service. If you let them create and pay for an account inside the app, you will have to use Apple's in app purchase and Apple gets 30%.

cf App Review Guidelines, section 11 (Purchasing).

Alternatively, you can launch Mobile Safari from the App, and after registering you can pass their login details back to the app using a custom URL handler (eg. myappid://somestring/) here is an explanation of custom URL schemes http://www.idev101.com/code/Objective-C/custom_url_schemes.html