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Knox licenses

About licenses

Samsung Knox SDKs are powerful. They provide you with system-level control over all of the great features in Samsung phones, tablets, and wearables. This empowers you to create an app with differentiating features for the next big business opportunity. Knox SDKs extend capabilities in the Android SDKs, providing enterprises with additional features to remotely manage, customize, and secure devices.

With Knox licenses, Samsung controls access to the more powerful APIs to vetted enterprises in our Knox Partner Program. If Samsung finds that an enterprise is abusing the use of our APIs intentionally or accidentally, Samsung can revoke their licenses immediately and prevent their apps from calling our APIs.

Knox license process

  1. Obtain development key — You can generate a development license key through the Knox Developer Portal. For added security, you can bind the key to an app so that only that app can activate the license. The APIs you can call depend on your status in the Knox Developer Portal.
  2. Build your app — Build your app with our SDKs.
  3. Activate the license — In your app, activate your development license by calling the license APIs. When your app launches and activates a license, a Knox License Management Service (KLMS) Agent on the device communicates with a Knox license server to authenticate your app and determine the app's permissions. The device needs network connectivity to enable this to happen. Once authenticated, your app can execute the APIs it has the permissions for.
  4. Obtain commericial key — When you are ready to release your app, get a commercial license. Find a license for your needs.
  5. Associate your app — You need to register your Commercial license key and associate your app with the Commercial key in the Knox Developer Portal. Only associated apps can activate Commercial license keys.

Additional license types

Other license types include:

  • Backwards—compatible key — This enables devices running Knox v2.7.1 and earlier to use the Knox 3.x SDK. If your app needs to support devices with older Knox versions, you need to generate only one such key, which works on an unlimited number of devices for an unlimited period.
  • REST authentication key — If you are also using our web services, you need an authentication token to verify that you are allowed to access our REST APIs.

Knox v2.9 first introduced a Beta version of the permission-based KPE license. Before that, devices running Knox v2.8 and earlier used these older license types:

  • Enterprise License Manager (ELM) — The ELM license was replaced by the Knox Standard license and has reached end of service. To get more info, see the ELM end of service FAQs. SDKs that used this license have now been deprecated. These include the Knox Standard, Premium, and Customization SDKs, as well as the Samsung EDU SDK.
  • Independent Software Vendor (ISV) — The Samsung India Identity SDK still uses this ISV license to authenticate apps that call its APIs. The legacy Knox ISV SDK also used the ISV license. The ISV license continues to work with no changes needed.
  • Knox License Manager (KLM) — The legacy Knox Premium and Customization SDKs used the KLM license to track customer usage of paid APIs for billing purposes. The KLM license continues to work, but if your key reaches the maximum number of activations purchased, you need to contact us to buy more activations for the key.

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