Over-the-air deployment support. A good MIDE should allow the testing of the deployed app within the development environment. This can be tricky when the MobileApp needs to access Web services or other applications.
End-to-end mobile application development. Mobile devices are often not powerful enough to process or store large amounts of information locally. It is important to allow developers to create, test, and deploy entire mobile projects using a desktop MIDE.
Documentation and tutorials. Even free development tools need to be easy to learn and easy to use. Having adequate support materials is essential.
Graphical user interface builders. If the MIDE supports visual construction of user screens, prototypes can be constructed and tested quickly.