Mobile Application Management for iPhone

Question

I am trying to develop a critical enterprise application for iPhone,which needs to be able to list all the installed applications on the device. Also the application should allow the user to install other apps from this application by clicking some install button and uninstall app by clicking some uninstall button.That means this app should be able to manage all apps on the device (atleast all the enterprise apps on the device).

I know it is not possible in the sandboxed iPhone environment. So I am thinking to setup some MDM/MAM server which accepts requests from the client app in the iPhone and let the MDM/MAM server manage the app installation,deletion etc .

Is it possible to setup custom MDM or MAM sever? We already have an enterprise account.

Answer 1

If you want to determine whether other apps provided by your company are installed, you can add a unique URL scheme for each to the apps' Info.plist . Then to check their installation, you can iteratively check the return from -[UIApplication canOpenURL:]

If you want to be all crafty about this, you could download the list of url schemes from a server on your intranet. Thus users without a certain app could be directed to download it. Furthermore, you can check the installed version via a second special url for each app version of each app.

This does most of what you want… as for the uninstall, users can just hold down on the app until it jiggles then delete it.