After the fervent response that its magazine-like app got on the iPad, before its nearly $20million acquisition by CNN in August this year, Zite has now come up with a personalized news service for the iPhone.

The Zite iPhone app marks the company’s foray into the smaller screen space, and, as per the company’s chief executive Mark Johnson, the new app is essentially a “simplified version” of the big-screen iPad app. Johnson has also described the iPhone app as a “pocket-sized magazine.”

The newly-released Zite iPhone app depends chiefly on search technology to find out which topics are of interest for the consumers. It also features what is called the ‘Section Carousel’ which gives the users a topic-wise view of the stories; a thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback button; as well as the capability of sharing stories with friends via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Zite is one of the several companies which have been relentlessly trying to encourage the consumers to get their news on their mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers.

Other than Zite, some of the other contestants in the ‘magazine-like apps for mobile devices’ arena include the likes of Flipboard, AOL Editions, and the Yahoo Livestand. In addition, Google has just ventured into the fray with its Friday-released ‘Google Currents’ app for the Android devices, iPhone and iPad; with its content partners including PBS, CNET and Forbes.