Those customers may be able to get refunds from Apple over this mixup, but Halpin admitted that the nature of the App Store prevents Quickoffice from stepping in to help or even offer discounted upgrades to Quickoffice. Like most App Store developers, Halpin had a few complaints to accompany his praise of the App Store, which included an inability to identify or verify whether customers own an application for uses such as customer service or upgrades. "I want to help our customers. I read those reviews, and I want to do something about it," Halpin lamented. "But the App Store is just not very easily accessible to help solve problems."

Regardless, Quickoffice's App Store product line is now much clearer. Quickoffice for iPhone is the all-inclusive office suite, while Quicksheet provides stand-alone editing and viewing for Excel files, and (debuting later this month) will do the same for Word documents. Quickoffice Files remains as a cheap, simple file viewer and transfer utility, leaving Quickoffice to be priced as a money-saving bundle of all three apps.

Halpin would not share any App Store sales numbers, but he was happy to reveal a few Quickoffice features that are on their way. "We have quite a bit planned, with a large team working just on the iPhone, and a core team that works on the technologies that we push to all of our supported platforms." One of the most requested features--e-mailing files from within Quickoffice and its sister apps--should arrive within a week. Mounting an iPhone or iPod touch as a wireless drive for transferring files more easily is also coming, as are more formatting options, search and replace, and, of course, PowerPoint support.

Even more interestingly, Halpin shared that Quickoffice should soon gain more powerful sync features and integration with more online services besides MobileMe. The company is working on true, automatic sync of file changes between a desktop and an i-device, and the capability to tie into file storage services like Box.net and even Apple's iWork.com beta, are also in the works.

Quickoffice's arrival on iPhone OS may have filled in the final checkbox on many a potential iPhone shopper's gotta-have-it lists, despite a $20 price tag that places it on the higher end of the App Store price scale. Then again, we're talking about getting real work done, not novelty fart utilities and single-serving games. We'll have to wait and see if Quickoffice becomes a holy grail that entices productivity users and businesses into taking a another look at the iPhone.