On Friday, Zoho, makers of productivity and collaboration Web apps for businesses, released its first native app for iPhone and iPod touch, called Zoho Docs. Named after its Web app, Zoho Docs allows Zoho users to view their online documents stored in various Zoho services while on-the-go.

Zoho Docs is a streamlined viewer for documents stored in Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show, or Docs--the company's Web-based office apps (and Google Apps competitors) for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Any documents that you create in these apps, upload to them (including PDFs), or that other Zoho users have shared with you can be viewed in Zoho Docs for iPhone. You can also upload images from your device's Photos app.

In a blog post, Zoho says that the goal for this initial 1.0 version was to keep things simple, so it does not have some of the features of its competitors. For example, both Box.net and Dropbox offer universal apps for iPhone and iPad that can cache files for offline viewing. Box.net also lets you add comments to files for team members to review. If you want to actually edit documents on those services, however, you'll need a third-party app like Documents To Go; to my knowledge, there are no App Store apps that can edit Zoho documents yet.

Nevertheless, Zoho says that Zoho Docs is only its first step into native App Store apps, though it already offers mobile-optimized versions of some of its other Web apps, such as Zoho CRM. The company is soliciting feedback for new features as well as which other Zoho apps users feel should have native App Store companions.

Zoho Docs is available now for free in the App Store, and requires iOS 3.0 or later. The Zoho Docs service also offers 1GB of space for one user for free. If you want more storage or users, prices start at $3 per month for 5GB of storage, and $9 per month if you want three or more users and more features, such as check-out control, file revisions, bulk uploading, and more.

Source: NetworkWorld.com