NoteEricsson has reported that the global smartphone subscriber count will rise
from 1.9 billion to 5.9 billion in the next five years—fueled almost
exclusively by the developing world.If your gut reaction is, “It’s not my problem—my app is just for the tech-savvy middle-
class in the developed world,” rest assured that your evil web developer twin is sitting two
thousand miles away cackling at the thought of getting to a nascent market before you do
by actually putting in the effort necessary to deliver great experiences on low-powered
devices. (There’s actually an enormous conglomerate dedicated to this—search Google for
“Rocket Internet.”)
There’s another nasty reality to sidelining performance concerns: we systematically
make the mistake of testing our sites on devices operating under ideal loads. In reality, of
course, users have multiple apps and browser tabs running concurrently. Their devices are
working overtime to process a dozen tasks at any given time. Accordingly, the
performance baseline established for your app probably doesn’t reflect its performance in
the real world. Yikes!
But, fear not, keen developer. It’s time to explore the performance techniques at your
disposal and level up your animation game.