On Monday, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to sit down with Thea Chard of Xconomy.com, and talk all things Dashwire, Apple vs. Android, and the future of the smartphone market.

Check out the in-depth article here. Thanks, Thea!

Based on customer requests, we have released a new build for m:IQ from Best Buy Mobile in the Android Market.

It has:

- Froyo Support (Android 2.2) !

- Manual Sync option, which has been the #1 user requested feature

- Removes the consistently present m:IQ notification icon from the top menu bar

Get it now from the Android Market by heading here from your phone browser: http://tinyurl.com/installmiq

If you’re using Android, a cool way to discover and get apps to your phone is a service called AppBrain. We’re using it on our devices, and it’s great!

We were excited to see that Awesome Drop from Dashwire made the hot apps list!

If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s in beta, and you can download it free from the Android Market, or hit http://tinyurl.com/awesomedrop from your phone browser to add it.

Enjoy!

We heard from customers they wanted the ability to quickly and easily move files from their computer to their phone as part of the Dashwire offering, and we’ve come up with something we think is pretty awesome.

It’s drag and drop style – just find a file on your computer, drag to a web page target zone on your computer browser, and it wirelessly puts it on your phone! We started off moving photos. But then we wanted to move music. And PDFs, and Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

It’s Awesome Drop from Dashwire. It’s a beta as part of Dashwire Labs, but rocking. Check www.dashwire.com

TotalSmartphone did a quick write up here

Get it from Android Market. http://tinyurl.com/awesomedrop

Best Buy Mobile has just released an awesome new Android App for its award-winning service, m:IQ. Users can download it from the Android Market free! The app is available for all Android 2.x phones like the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Desire, HTC Legend, MyTouch3G Slide, and HTC Hero.

To install, visit the Android Market, or http://tinyurl.com/installmiq

Android App from Dashwire Puts Your Phone and Its Content on Your Own Personal Website: Enhances Phone, Saves Time, and Provides Assurance. Best Buy Mobile first to release for its award winning service, m:IQ 

We’re excited to announce that Dashwire has just released its Android mobile app to licensed partners, with Best Buy Mobile being the first to make it available to users of its m:IQ cloud sync service (http://miqlive.com)!

Android users will now have the same benefits that were previously only available to BlackBerry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile users, helping them to rest assured and to get the most out of their mobile phone experiences – without ever having to think about it.  That’s coverage for over 75% of the Open OS platforms around the world!

But Android is somewhat different, with its support for multiple sync accounts and all sorts of connected scenarios already built into the platform. So what does the Dashwire Android App bring to the table for Android users?

1)     Data migration to Android:  From BlackBerry, WinMo, and S60 – key for a large number of customers these days (check it out). 

2)     Single location to more easily access, interact with, and share:  Instead of multiple destinations, m:IQ offers a single location where all content is integrated in a private account on the web, making it easy for all types of users to feel assured that their data is safe and able to access and interact with their content in exciting new ways (text messaging from the web, automatic photo & video sharing to social networks, managing contacts & calendar events, listening to voicemails, etc.). 

3)     Text Message Inbox on PC: all your text messages are backed up online, and you can send and receive SMS messages from your phone on the website, just like an IM conversation, when sitting in front of your computer. 

4)     Fastest and most encompassing sync experience on Android:  Google sync is great, but it doesn’t cover all data types, and we think isn’t as fast or as seamless as the m:IQ experience (covering the primary data sets, and offering support for multiple contact/calendar accounts, enabling users with Google, Exchange, and other accounts to have a consolidated view on the web to create, edit, and delete contact and calendar events).

Check it out for yourselves and let us know what you think!  You can install the free Android app that Best Buy just released for m:IQ by visiting the Android Market: http://tinyurl.com/installmiq.

The Android app works with Android OS 2.x+, including Google Nexus One, Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Incredible, HTC Desire, HTC Legend, HTC Droid Eris, HTC Hero, Sprint EVO 4G, T-Mobile MyTouch3G Slide, Samsung Moment, and the other Android devices in market that receive an upgrade to AndroidOS 2.0 or 2.1. NOTE: Android 2.2 (Froyo) support will be here shortly.

Android Optimizations:

App includes:

• Wi-Fi sync-only option for media to save on data fees or upload speed
• Support for multiple sync accounts, so users with Google, Exchange and other accounts on the phone will have the ability to have a consolidated view on the web where they can create, edit and delete contact and calendar entries to sync into those accounts on the phone.

Step one of many for Dashwire on Android this year.  Stay tuned…

We know we’re doing some really cool stuff, but for those who know us (with our socks and sandals combo), “Fierce” probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind.

Fortunately, the internationally recognized daily email newsletter reaching more than 72,000 senior wireless industry executives across 100 countries believes otherwise.  That’s right folks, FierceWireless just named Dashwire as one of its “Fierce 15” wireless companies of 2010!

Why’d we get it?  Well, for starters, we’ve got a hot, award-winning solution out in market with Best Buy Mobile called m:IQ (http://miqlive.com).  And as the mobile cloud computing space continues to accelerate with Apple and Google leading the charge, Dashwire has quietly created a powerful cross-platform alternative for its licensees to quickly bring to market compelling services that have been compared directly in the press to what Apple is doing, while creating new opportunities for monetization.

As daily readers ourselves, we’re extremely excited to be named to this year’s Fierce 15, and look forward to sharing more as 2010 unfolds!

One week after rolling out the first licensed partner service built on the DASHWORKS platform – mIQ from Best Buy Mobile – we’re announcing our first partnership designed to help other companies more quickly get into the game with industry-leading connected services of their own.  
 
We’re super excited to announce Teleca as our latest platform partner! Teleca is a world-leading supplier of software services to the mobile industry, with their many areas of expertise including device-level integration, UI customization, and testing.  Teleca engineers in its offshore centers have developed expertise in the DASHWORKS platform – meaning that operators and handset manufacturers can create customized, end-to-end experiences more rapidly and cost effectively than ever before.
 
More details can be found on our press release or on Teleca’s website .
  

After calendar synchronization, the number one feature requested by customers has been…BlackBerry support!

If you have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Outlook set up for your BlackBerry, you know the benefits of syncing your data. As RIM and mobile operator price points and marketing have unlocked the consumer market with devices like the Pearl, Curve, Storm, Tour and Bold, it’s clear that consumers would like many of the same wireless sync benefits that corporate users take for granted. For customers who don’t have an IT manager or BlackBerry Enterprise Server, the ability to back up all your device information, plus enjoy the benefits of wireless synchronization and media uploads and sharing to social networks enhances the overall phone experience.

The BlackBerry client supports SMS, contacts, calls, calendar, photos, videos, status updates to Facebook and Twitter. BlackBerry joins Windows Mobile and S60 as a DASHWORKS-supported open mobile platform. Best Buy Mobile is the first licensee making the BlackBerry client available to customers via its mIQ service.

Developing for the BlackBerry went very well. Our team leveraged our learnings from architecting the Windows Mobile and S60 client, and we improved performance in almost every area.

There were a couple of APIs that are not yet supported in the platform that we wanted to use, and we have provided the list to the BlackBerry developer team in the hopes that we will see those additions to future platform releases.

Enjoy, and appreciate feedback to improve. Thanks!

Today Best Buy Mobile unveiled its consumer service called, mIQ. Best Buy is the first licensee of the DASHWORKS platform from Dashwire!! We’re pumped!

For a complete tour, click here.

It has been a ton of fun working with Best Buy on bringing this service to market for its customers. Both the Dashwire and Best Buy Mobile team worked together in a collaborative fashion to achieve what we believe is an exciting new service. The team at Best Buy has great ideas, and is doing much more in mobile than many people realize.

Best Buy is rocking on the mobile front, and to give you a sense of what they are up to, have captured a few data points below:

- over 1,000 of its big box retail stores are now outfitted with Best Buy Mobile stores
- they have 38 stand alone Best Buy Mobile stores in malls around the country (like photo above from Mall of America store which is awesome)
- they have huge selection of phones and accessories from every major operator
- they can help customers with applications and accessories like SlingBox or Bluetooth stereo speaker set up
- they own 50% of The Carphone Warehouse, a UK-based company that has over 2,000 retail stores in 9 countries in Europe. (MarketWatch)
- their CEO has publicly stated that they have a goal of 15% US market share for mobile phone sales (WSJ)
- they have a cool phone upgrade checker to see if it’s time for you to get a deal on a new phone
- Best Buy partners with Google on mobile apps (Forbes)

You can check out Best Buy Mobile at your nearest Best Buy store, or online here

To check out mIQ on your BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and S60 phone, please visit, http://www.miqlive.com from your PC or Mac browser, or http://m.miqlive.com/ from your phone browser.