IPhone Content Distribution

Question

Hi,
We have software that has 2 parts to it. One part is the actual application and the other part is content for the application. Examples, of similar applications is mp3 players and mp3s, eBook readers and eBooks, etc. We sell our content and not our application. We are trying to figure out how to sell our content for the iPhone. We see a few possibilities
1. Bundle the content with the application and sell it on iTunes. We will certainly do this for our top content. However, this would require us to maintain over 400 applications on iTunes with 100's more on the way. This is just too costly for us to post all of our content to iTunes and maintain it. The other problem is that users will want their content to work together. So if they buy product A and product B they will want the content from both to work together. As far as I can tell right now the sandbox will prevent this, but I haven't done a lot of research on this yet.
2. Sell some content on iTunes and sell the rest of the content from our web site. We would NOT sell the actual application or any plugins to the application from our web site. We would just be selling content. The user would get the application from iTunes and then the application would download the content they have purchased from our web site.
Does anyone know if number 2 is permissible? As best we can tell from the SDK license agreement we can't sell plugins, applications, or unlock codes from our web site. We would be selling content for our application, but we are not sure if this is acceptable.
Consider a company like mobipocket (www.mobipocket.com). I doubt they are going to post their 30,000+ titles bundled with their reader to iTunes as separate applications. (I guess they would maybe do it if there was an automated way to do it). Or consider a company that wants to sell subscriptions to different newspapers. Does anyone know what kind of distribution model Apple will sanction for these situations?
Thanks,
Stephen

Answer 1

Scott,
Your proposal is the solution we have been thinking would be the best as well. We were looking at the SDK agreement and we were not sure about the following sections
3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
3.3.3 Without Apple’s prior written approval, an Application may not provide, unlock or enable additional features or functionality through distribution mechanisms other than the iTunes Store.
So we were really wondering about 3.3.3 "enable additional features or functionality through distribution mechanisms other than the iTunes Store." Would content distribution over the web be considered enabling additional features or functionality? We would not be enabling different features or functionality in the software with our content. However, the application would display different data and information to the user based on the content that they purchased.
Stephen