Canvas is slow on mobile platforms, at least mobile safari is anyway, so you'll want go use CSS based positioning of objects on those. Specifically use "translate3d" which will turn on the hardware accelerated rendering of objects.
Check out the CAAT library for canvas though, it's fast and you can use CSS backed "actors" and not change the game logic.
I cannot post links yet but here are some pseudo links http://labs.hyperandroid.com/animation