Transferring ownership of an iPhone app on the app store

Question

My team and I have an app which we\'re going to be submitting to the store pretty soon, but we know that we\'ll be selling the app to another company in the near future. Doe

Answer 1

Guess I'm late to the party but Apple just added a button to iTunes Connect to do just this. Sign into your iTunes Connect account, go to 'Manage Apps' and click on the app you want to transfer. In the section on the top right, there's a button to transfer your app now.

Cheers!

Answer 2

I don't believe that you can transfer ownership to another account. But a simple solution would be to add URL schemes to your app to allow data to be transferred from your app to a new app that your customer would release with the same source.

The new app would have to be free though (maybe the lite version?), so your old customers wouldn't be forced into buying it again. The only real downside I can see of this is that the new app would basically be starting over again from a marketing perspective, which is no minor thing of course!

Mobile Orchard had an article on data migration from Lite to Paid versions of an application that may be of interest:

Lite-to-paid iPhone application data migrations with custom URL handlers

Answer 3

Follow Up: After all: it is possible (as of late March 2010).

I haven't read all comments or other threads about this issue, so this might be obsolete, but it seems it's basically related to the iTunes-related structure of the appStore.

You can't be part of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones Bands...

Anyway, eventually, a colleague managed to get things sorted out, and we got our App (which was running under my private, single Dev account) running under a new, enterprise account. We kept our ratings, our #1 place in our category in the appstore, and all in all it went smooth (after several hours of phone-calls with apple).

As far as I can recall, the main problem was those help-desk folks were knowing things were going to change, but they didn't know by when and how. Probably due to iPad coming and related timelines involved). Anyway. It's possible, and it's pretty easy. Send your request, wait a couple of weeks (might be days by now), and you'll have the transfer. One issue though: They may have some bug in their migration code, because apple mixes firstname and lastname of the dev / master account after migration. well, who cares.

Answer 4

I had my own experience with this, and the answer I got from Apple Developer Relations (Although it took a month to get an email response and 6 weeks for the follow up phone call) was (in short) that they currently don't offer any way to transfer individual applications from one developer account to another.

He did so by saying that there was a single "Option" for doing this sort of transfer, which is to delete the app from the account that it is currently on, and then resubmit to the Apple store from the new account under the same name (but it would have a new appstore id). I pointed out (and he acknowledged) that this would delete any existing user reviews, ruin the upgrade path for existing users, break iAds, in-app purchases, and game center integration. So it really isn't a solution at all.

He also said that it isn't possible to transfer ownership of all your apps to another existing account (they seem to lack the granularity to move individual apps). However if I wanted to give up all my apps to another individual it could be possible by creating a corporation (probably S-Corp, although he didn't advise), transferring ownership of my account to the S-Corp (which would be allowed if I were a part owner), and then selling the s-corp to the new owner. (Yikes right?)

The method I plan to go with is the following (I'll update with my success), In my specific case I have a paid application that (.99) that I'm trying to transfer to another owner:

1. I will create a lightweight application using the same AppID that is designed to inform users that the Application has changed owners, and provide a link to the app store where they can download the new application. When launched will upload a hashed form of their UDID to a server (which I will now have to maintain) listing them as a previous customer.

2. I will upload this new lightweight app to my existing account as an upgrade to the other existing application (so that when users update, they will instead be marked as an existing customer, be presented with a message explaining the situation, and a link to the new app)

3. I will convert my paid app to being a light application that has some functionality, but requires an in-app purchase of .99 to get the full functionality. Additionally, this new app will check with my server to see if the UDID is in the existing customers database, and if so give them full functionality (without having to do the in-app purchase).

... ARGHH! :) It's an ugly experience for the customers and a whole hell of a lot of work for the developer... but the only option provided by Apple. (Although, I'm not sure that it will even work, as it's entirely possible that they will reject my lightweight "update" application from the store, and thereby prevent the hack upgrade path as well)

UPDATE: Too much work for the person that I was trying to give the application to. Ended up not proceeding with the plan. Think that it could probably still work, and would love to hear from anyone who tries it or pulls it off :)

Answer 5

As far as I know there is no way to transfer apps to a different user/company. I think the app should be in your customers account from the beginning. Otherwise you probably have payment problems too (people paying you instead of your customer).

Why not just sell the app to a customer before releasing it. If they want to see it running before it is released, just sent them a version built with an ad-hoc certificate.

Answer 6

As per a new announcement from Apple today (just after iOS 7 release) this has become possible . It says "Apps can now be transferred from one developer to another within iTunes Connect, for example after an acquisition or when a distribution deal expires. Transferring the ownership of an app does not affect the app’s availability on the App Store. All ratings and reviews will be transferred and your customers will continue to have access to all available app updates."