Apple Closes Russians' Access to Business Application Development Platform

Several sources in the IT market told RBC that Apple closed access to the Apple Developer Enterprise Program (ADEP) for Russian developers on February 12. This program allows companies to develop applications for the iOS operating system and distribute them among their employees without publishing them in the App Store.

The closure of access to the service was confirmed by the HEAD of iOS development at red_mad_robot, Alexander Tuzovsky. According to him, Apple had previously sent letters to companies using Enterprise certificates (an Apple certificate with which developers can sign applications and distribute them), warning that these certificates would stop working from mid-February. From that date, February 12, all data related to the program was deleted and it can no longer be used, said Dmitry Kostin, head of Touch Instinct.

After the start of the special military operation, Apple and many other foreign companies suspended their activities or completely left the Russian market. In particular, Apple earlier, in March 2022, stopped supporting Russian cards of the Mastercard and Visa payment systems, and then Mir in the Apple Pay service, and removed applications of sanctioned banks and companies from the App Store.

In the middle of last year, the United States introduced new sanctions against RUSSIA, under which American companies are prohibited from providing a number of IT services to Russian clients, including supplying software for enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), supply chain management (SCM), enterprise data warehouse (EDW), maintenance management systems (CMMS), and project and product lifecycle management (PLM). It is also prohibited to provide IT support services or cloud services for the relevant software to "any person located in Russia." This package of sanctions came into force on September 12, 2024. Citing these prohibitions, for example, Google's BigQuery cloud service (a cloud storage service that allows you to quickly process queries to large data sets) ceased operations in Russia on September 9, MICROSOFT disconnected Russian customers from Microsoft Office 365 services, the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security mobility and security management platform, as well as the Teams communications service, etc.

According to Alexander Tuzovsky, Apple did not explain why it introduced new restrictions for Russian users now. Dmitry Kostin only recalled that in its previous statements, Apple explained that it was taking measures in accordance with the requirements of the law and international restrictions.

RBC sent a request to Apple.

There are two types of developer programs in the Apple ecosystem: Apple Developer Program (ADP) and Apple Developer Enterprise Program, explains KODE CTO Nikolay Nikolenko. ADP is a standard account that allows you to publish applications in the App Store, it can be obtained by both individuals and companies. ADEP is a program designed exclusively for legal entities. According to Nikolenko, such solutions were actively used by almost all large corporations and developer companies to provide employees with digital tools within their ecosystem. In addition, various developers actively used the Enterprise account to speed up the process of testing applications without the need to post them in a public store, he explained.

This is confirmed by Alexander Tuzovsky. According to him, red_mad_robot used Enterprise certificates both for developing applications within the company and for its clients to speed up the receipt of feedback during the development process. ADEP was quite popular among companies using iOS development to create internal applications - corporate chatbots, accounting systems, logistics, CRM systems (customer relationship management system) and internal business tools, Tuzovsky continues. The solution was most popular in large companies, where it is important to distribute the offer to employees without publishing it in the App Store in the public domain, he specified.

An RBC source in another Russian IT company adds that the applications that ADEP allowed businesses to launch took into account corporate cybersecurity rules and provided access to the organization’s internal information resources.

According to Nikolay Nikolenko, Apple's blocking and deletion of developer accounts has seriously affected the mobile app market. Companies are forced to reconsider their strategies, look for workarounds, and invest in alternative platforms. Many have switched to PWA (Progressive Web Apps, a technology that visually and functionally transforms a website into an app) and adapting web services to mobile devices, but such solutions have a number of limitations and cannot fully replace native mobile apps, Nikolenko explained.

Companies are forced to look for other ways to install applications on iOS devices, but there are certain limitations, says Alexander Tuzovsky. For example, publishing through the App Store implies public availability, which is not suitable for internal developments of companies. The AdHoc scheme (development of a solution for a specific situation or problem) allows you to install an application on only 100 devices and limits the removal of the application, says the expert. According to him, mass distribution and testing are impossible with this option.

Currently, there is no direct alternative to ADEP with the same functionality on the market, Dmitry Kostin said. "We are monitoring what solutions will appear. In the meantime, for testing and distributing builds, we use standard Apple tools, such as TestFlight (Apple's beta testing service for iOS applications), as well as corporate MDM solutions (Mobile Device Management) for internal applications.

An RBC source at another Russian IT company names direct installation of programs on employees’ devices as an alternative.

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