Sell your app development business.

Store listings, consoles, and who holds the certificates

A mobile and product studio sells shipping capacity—iOS, Android, and the device lab—plus whoever holds the Apple Developer and Google Play organizations. Buyers underwrite whether client apps live in the client’s console or yours, whether signing certificates walk out with a contractor, and whether store listings can be transferred without a week of lockouts. A studio that only ever ships into the client’s account is easier to hand off than one that mixed personal and company enrollments.

App Store and Play policy is not a footnote. Review risk, in-app purchase rules, and kids or health claims sit on the apps you still maintain. We map that before a buyer’s counsel does.

Studio pipeline vs a product the shop also owns

Client sprints, retainers, and a product you launched under your own name are three P&Ls. If the studio’s best engineers also keep your own app alive, a buyer has to choose: buy the services book, the product, or both with a fight about who gets the team. Do not market them as one “app company.” Wearable, TV, and store-feature work only help if someone besides the founder can still submit.

Platform work—React Native, Flutter, native—only helps if more than one person can release. A founder who is the only person with a TestFlight admin seat is owner labor.

Handoff when the shipping team is the founder

Expect a list of live apps, who owns each console, and which retainers include store updates after the OS changes. A few weeks of paired releases is normal. A year of you remaining the submitting user is a signal the studio is not transferable yet. Clean the org chart on Apple and Google before you take a tour. Device-lab hardware, TestFlight groups, and Firebase or analytics projects that still sit on a personal email are the same class of problem as a missing signing key—small until the first forced update.