It's really, *really* important for web developers & others who care about the web to understand how poorly the web performs in emerging markets -- and why that re-enforces the centralizing position of top-10 native apps.

When every link is an unknowably large tax...why bother? When there's no content in your language, search isn't helpful. When you can't read read, URLs are not an asset.

The current state of mobile web development -- and the inability to deliver competitive experiences no matter how hard you try -- are custom-made arguments for the superiority of native platforms and the strong centralization that comes with them.

I know it's Cassandra-esque to witter on about this, but we cannot afford to continue on as we are. Too much script, too often, is drowning our opportunity to compete.

I can't grok why it's so hard to convince management that this majority of the world matters. Or just us on trains, for that matter. "We're doing North America first" or "Europe first" is too common an argument.

What Is a native platform?

I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m not a dumb person.❤️

I thought the same until I've seen the first good pwa apps (but this only works on Android). They are also like 1. download once most of things 2. reuse that download/cache as often as you want like apps.

Most EM users -- particularly the budget-conscious -- carry Androids, so the fact that Apple is ~3 years behind there has less of an impact.

It's the poor script letting down websites that take forever to load

Cannot agree with you more, being in Nigeria currently is very eye opening. I thought I knew Africa but have been humbled by my visit here these past few days. When the choice is food/transport to work vs internet web pages sapping up all your money; something is very wrong ...

Having been many times in South Africa 🇿🇦 —being *very* different from Nigeria—already there I thought it a shame how big telco providers treat their customers. It’s been a while though.

Yeah you'll find that that the more poverty stricken segments of the consumers are paying 1000% more per MB than more better off folks as they just don't get data bundles advertised to them. It's bad, being the reason for startups like toomuchwifi.co.za as well.

How supportive are we of #webperf advocates in EM like @codebeast and @unicodeveloper who live and breathe these challenges and work tirelessly to educate their dev communities on such best practices?

Very supportive

Some real-life impact of #webperf in Nigeria. User feedback about two insanely popular websites. Source =>

Meanwhile blog posts on blog.google are still shipping over 20 MB, literally.