React Native is a famous framework that allows developers to develop cross-platform apps using JavaScript. Mainly, development companies make use of two different programming languages for developing an app for two different platforms. (Android and iOS) 

On the other hand, when we talk about React Native, developers can develop an app that can run on both platforms using the same code. Connect with your app development company to avail React Native app development services from them. 

Meta Incorporation (formerly Facebook) introduced React Native, one of the most popular frameworks used for mobile app development. With a large number of companies using React Native for their mobile apps, one might wonder if there are many benefits that come with using it for your next project.

• What is React Native?
• 7 Benefits Of Using React Native On Your Next Project
• Why React Native is The Future?
• What is The Future of React Native?
• Is React Native Worth it in 2022?
• Why React Native is so Popular?
• What React Native is Used For?
• What is Replacing React Native?
• What Are The Features of React Native?
• How Many Developers Use React Native?
• Which Company Uses React Native?

What is React Native?

It is an open-source javascript framework that is used to develop native applications for various platforms like Android and iOS. Javascript, on the other hand, is a popular and stable programming language, mainly known for its permutable architecture. 

Read Also: What Are The Benefits Of React Native For Mobile App Development

According to Facebook’s React Native site, “React language uses the same fundamental building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps. You just put those building blocks together using JavaScript.”

Many people confuse React Native with ReactJS. Even though they are cut from the same cloth, still they have a minor dissimilarity. 

7 Benefits Of Using React Native On Your Next Project

There are ample benefits of using React Native for mobile app development. Below are 7 of them.

1. Cheaper than Native Development

When using React Native, you only need to build an application once in JavaScript. However, following a native approach requires you to build two apps separately for iOS and Android from scratch. Since React Native needs you to write only one code, you don’t need two developer teams and also save twice the costs otherwise required for building and maintenance.

2. Accelerates Development and Reduces the Time to Market

One of the most appealing advantages of React Native is its short development time. Accelerate the process with the numerous readymade components the framework offers. Using React Native, developers can save about 40% of the development effort compared to building the same app for Android and iOS.

3. JavaScript

As per a Statista report, developers throughout the world commonly use JavaScript. The report states that approximately 68% of respondents said that they use JavaScript. As React Native is written in JavaScript, developers are unhesitant when choosing it.

4. Smaller Team vs. Pure Native

Although a React Native development team still requires iOS/Android developers, most of the effort concentrates on Javascript.

When it comes to native app development, a company needs two teams, with each specializing in iOS and Android. Having two teams can lead to communication gaps and also hinder the development process.

It is evident that the two projects become inconsistent because native iOS and Android teams have their procedures and speeds. It can lead to irregularities in the app’s’ looks, functionality, and features.

On the other hand, choosing React Native will require a JavaScript developer experienced in coding for both platforms. If you are building an app with high native features, a developer with native skills becomes crucial. However, the team is smaller and easily manageable in the majority of cases.

5. React Native is Open Source

React Native is open-source and allows developers to use its libraries and frameworks for free. It also worked under the MIT license, a software license that only puts limited restrictions on how the software is reused and offers the developers legal protection.

6. Hot Reloading

The main goal of React Native is to provide developers with the best experience. One of its most attractive features is its reloading time. Even if the app is growing, you will only need 1 second to save a file and see the changes.

It helps in keeping the app running while you add new versions of the edited files. So, if you are modifying the user interface, you are not losing anything.

7. Massive Developer Community

According to Statista React Native is the most used cross-platform framework with a 42% adoption rate, has over 90k stars on Github, and is a highly-used framework. An easily accessible open-source platform welcomes framework contributions from every developer, which offers a full advantage to the developers.

Why React Native is The Future?

It’s completely understandable that developers don’t want to invest the little time they have to learn a technology that has a good chance of becoming obsolete in the near future. But it takes just one look at Google Trends to understand that the interest in React Native is as strong as ever.

React Native is used by many Fortune 500 companies and startups alike, including:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Bloomberg
• Pinterest
• Skype
• Tesla
• Uber
• Walmart
• Wix.com

React Native’s GitHub repository statistics reveal that nearly 2,000 contributors have committed 16,000 times in 72 branches with over 300 releases.

According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018, which surveyed the question and answer site’s developer community about everything from their favorite technologies to their job preferences, React is the framework developers say they most want to work with if they do not already. As such, it’s no wonder that so many developers are interested in React Native.

Even though Facebook has been encouraging developers to participate in the development of React Native right from the beginning, the company has big plans to step up its community support and empower it to shape the future of React Native.

In January 2018, Facebook created the react-native-releases repository, which allows everyone to keep up the new releases of React Native in a more collaborative manner and opens the conversation of what should be part of a certain release.

The same year in July, Facebook created a repository dedicated solely to discussions and proposals, providing a safe environment for all members of the community to generate interesting conversations related to the main React Native repository.

Everything indicates that the future of React Native is bright: from its thriving community to its momentum to the long-term plans of its core developers. Since its release in 2015, React Native has transformed into a go-to-framework for developers who want to create innovative apps and capture their fair share of the rapidly growing mobile market.

What is The Future of React Native?

We saw above how the framework is so popular. But, what are the factors that make it more attractive for developers? Here are some points.

Better Performance

Facebook created this framework as a part of its hackathon, but, over the years it has been phenomenal. Especially if you consider a Javascript-based framework, then React Native is one of the best with faster loading applications.

React Native provides a plethora of native UI components, boilerplate codes, and native environments that can help you with native-like apps. These apps are faster and more advanced. These apps are also quite interactive with the user and provide amazing UX.

Code-Sharing Bliss

If you want to reach more audiences, you need to create separate apps for Android and iOS. That means double development time and double the cost. But with the React Native community of cross-platform developers, you can save time as well as money.

Many companies choose React Native due to its capability of code-sharing. Developers can share as much as 90% of the source codes across platforms.

It helps businesses to reduce the Software development costs by 50-80%. So, businesses can invest more in their products than just development purposes.

Codesharing is great for your business not just for the most part, but, it can help you achieve better UX. It is the reason why React Native developers are in demand. Companies can leverage this to create powerful apps with native UX through React Native.

React Native For Existing App

React Native is amazing and you will surely like to use it for your existing apps too. But, there is a little catch here. You need to use Cordova-based codes for using the React Native framework for your existing apps.

You can use the Cordova plugin in React Native. For cross-platform apps, you can also use Ionic and Cordova plugins.

The Real Deal is Javascript

Javascript is the real silo behind React Native. So, if you are looking for React Native developers for cross-platform apps, then you should demand JS expertise.

Javascript has been the powerhouse that brought many different technologies. So, finding developers with Javascript knowledge in the React Native community is not that hard.

Compatible Features

We have already seen how React Native offers compatible features for Android and iOS. But, the React native future will be more amazing than ever. We will see the rise of React Native with compatibility to other platforms like Windows, macOS, Linux, tvOS, watchOS, and many more.

Empower React Native Community

The React Native community has been growing since its inception. There is a whole set of forums and discussion panels in the Github repository.

According to Sophie Alpert, the Engineering Manager at React:

“We know that some teams are looking for more thorough documentation in topics like startup optimization, where our expertise hasn’t yet been written down. Expect to see some of these changes over the coming year.”

The React Native repositories have seen more than 2,000 developers contribute 16,000 times for 300 releases in about 72 branches. These GitHub statistics show how Facebook is working towards the future of the React Native framework.

Early 2018 saw Facebook creating a strong and reliable react-native-releases repository. It was a library for all the releases in React native framework. It was envisaged as a platform for the fruition of collaborative efforts to React Native’s future.

In the same year, Facebook came up with a separate repository for discussions and proposals. A repository is a great place for contributors and developers to discuss different releases and tools for React Native.

The Ease of Web Apps

Now, you don’t need extensive code lists for your web application development. Mobile applications are great and there is no way to ignore it. But, why not extend your already built websites to the world of smartphones with native wrappers.

That is where a React Native framework can help you find the best releases of web apps. You can use React Native to create responsive web apps for your business.

During the React native EU in 2019, Emily Janzer laid out a complete plan on phase-wise changes of React Native framework in 2022.

Phase One: Native Modules

The first phase will be focused on the native modules for the cross-platform apps.

• Type-safe – An improvement over the safety of codes that you share between JS and native platforms.
• Less overhead – It will help reduce the callback overloads between Javascript and native environments.
• Faster Startup – It will reduce the initialization of native apps by default for faster loading apps.

Phase Two: Fabric

Fabric is a project by Facebook. It will change the React Native future. Fabric is a project to make React Native community and its tools more compatible with other platforms than the normal iOS and Android.

It will help create a lower overload on the app architectures and your apps will run faster than the old cross-platform apps in react.

Single Thread: A thread is a channel through which the system communicates to users. A user interface or UI is a medium to interact with the users.

To each user request, a UI has to go through three different threads. But, Fabric will help UI to communicate through callbacks across the Javascript.

Async Bliss: We have seen how asynchronous rendering works wonder. We saw it with Node.Js in the Javascript universe.

But, now with Fabric, it is going to be a reality of React Native in the future releases. Fabric will help the incorporation of async rendering in React Native.

Native Bridges: We have often seen that cross-platform apps struggle due to the gap between the shared code and native environments.

To enhance the debugging of such bugs, you need native bridges. Fabric will provide a simplified native bridge between the JS and Platforms.

It is a new single thread method that will enhance the UI for better interactions. It will provide:

• A native bridge between JS and OS platforms
• Improved user experience through highly reactive UIs
• Better code sharing with debugging capabilities
• Rapid loading mobile apps

Phase Three: New API

With the last phase of 2020, Facebook will be using the early releases of React Native like the new renderer(Fabric) and the native modules to create an initialization path.

It will help achieve faster apps. So, React Native will be faster to load and create rapid apps for your business. So, you can say that it is an upgrade that can change the future of React Native.

One of the most essential upgrades to watch out for in the React Native community is JavaScript Interface JSI. It is an interesting way to connect with the Javascript engine

It helps developers to connect with the engine while writing codes in C++. You can even use APIs like JSC and Hermes. You can use it for:

• Creating Javascript runtime
• Loading of JS bundle
• Callback functions for JS and C++
• Creating the JS objects and accessing them through C++

Is React Native Worth it in 2022?

If you already have web development experience, then learning React Native will give you even bigger opportunities with very minimal effort. You already have a bunch of skills that are useful when learning React Native: the knowledge of React and its related tools, declarative UI or a component approach to building apps. That’s a really solid knowledge base for a start. 

Being a React Native Developer opens the door to interesting, cutting-edge projects that often use innovative technologies, such as Augmented Reality. An example of such a project may be an app that allows users to see how the furniture they consider buying will look like in their apartment, or to check how a house they had designed will fit in the building plot they want to buy. Sounds pretty cool to me. 

Since more and more companies choose to build mobile apps in React Native due to faster development and deployment time, the job opportunities for React Native Developers are plentiful and it’s definitely a path worth taking.  

It’s a well-established framework with a reliable API that’s backed by Facebook. React and JavaScript developers will find it simple to understand. Existing React libraries, tools, UI frameworks, and tutorials may be used. The framework also has a large and supportive community.

It, like Flutter, enables rapid development on iOS, Android, and the web using a single codebase. React Native allows you to contribute new code to an existing app, reducing the chance of losing functionality during a full reload or app rebuild.

Why React Native is so Popular?

Let us now study why React Native is the most popular mobile app development platform. One of the reasons for this is that Facebook released it after they tried and tested it on their own mobile app.

1. Single Coding – With React Native one codebase is created that complies similarly with both Native Java and Swift codes. This makes the app work smoothly in both iOS and Android by creating a bridge-like mechanism that allows communication in both directions between the UI components and Native components. Synchronizing features and layouts is no longer required, which makes the development process much faster.

2. No Special Skill Required – React Native does not need any special technical know-how. A basic knowledge of JavaScript is needed which is affordable and easily available. JavaScript developers with little self-education can use React Native to develop world-class enterprise mobility solutions. Basic knowledge of the web components and their counterpart mobile components is needed.

3. Quicker Development- When you have one coding system that is applicable to both iOS and Android, the development process becomes much faster. It is like creating a single solution for supporting several devices by sharing common code. So the development time is halved. The quality is upgraded, which means that you have a quality product with a development to market time reduced by a large margin.

4. Cost Reduction- Usually any new technology is associated with a higher cost of development and even more for two separate platforms. But now platforms can be connected with a single code. Braided versions are continuously released in the market so your app is automatically updated at no extra cost. They update the usability of the React components and the Native components, which means that the overall updating is being made at no extra cost.

5. Easy Debugging- With React Native the final process of testing and quality control is sped up. This is possible because the root cause can be easily figured out and the corresponding debugging can be done from a single coding. The QA phase is sped up while making the app secure for all platforms. Repeated debugging is done all along the development process, thus saving a lot of time, and you can enter the market more quickly with a quality enterprise mobility solution.

6. Simultaneous Release- Marketing an app is quite expensive, and pushing it to the top rank adds to the cost. A large amount of the allotted development budget goes to marketing and advertising. Expenses double up if you have to go for separate launches of your app for different platforms. React Native mobile app development services can cut the cost considerably by using a single marketing strategy. A simultaneous launch on all platforms will not only reduce the cost but gives more effective marketing and increases the referral rate for your app.

7. Single Development Team- With React Native you do not need a separate development team for each platform, a distinct maintenance team, and even a project manager to coordinate the various teams. Instead of having many different teams now, you can work with one expert team for all the platforms, doing all the functions from development and testing to maintenance. This reduces employee expenses as well as the development-to-market time. The reduced expenses will allow you to give more employee benefits and you can now have a satisfied and stable workforce.

8. Simple UI/UX- The apps that are developed using React Native do not take longer loading time and deliver a fantastic user experience. A good and easy UI/UX always satisfies users. React Native allows a highly simplified UI. Apps that are developed on React Native have a very responsive design and so their loading time is greatly reduced. Integration of the Native code with JavaScript smoothens platform-specific Native UI and also boosts the performance of your app.

What React Native is Used For?

We mentioned React Native utilizes JavaScript to produce the app’s interface. Unlike its competitors (e.g. Ionic), React Native does not rely on webviews, but on the actual real materials provided by native platforms. It has built-in access to the native views and components and can utilize native-written code and allow the API access to OS-specific features inside the app. The question is – how does that happen exactly?

React Native uses the concept of “bridge”, which allows for asynchronous communication between the JavaScript and Native elements – the bridge concept lies at the very heart of React Native’s flexibility. Native and JavaScript elements are completely different technologies, but they are able to communicate.

This type of architecture offers the benefit of using a lot of OS-native features, but also comes with important challenges; e.g. constant use of bridges inside the app may significantly slow down its performance. If you’re building an app that involves many events, a lot of data, etc. React Native might not be the best option.

As we mentioned, there are no real industry-specific obstacles in terms of using React Native, it all comes down to establishing your app’s key features and competitive advantage.

React Native is a perfectly good solution for all consumer-facing apps as it offers just on-point performance, and it is (in most cases) easier and cheaper to build than two separate native apps with the same service or product. Most of the consumer-facing apps do not rely on complex animations and UIs which, again, makes React Native a great and reliable solution for the endeavor.

See some of the companies in various industries that utilize React Native in their businesses.

• Social networks – Instagram, Facebook App, Discord, Pinterest
• Entertainment & Journalism – Vogue, Bloomberg, newonce.net
• B2B solutions – Salesforce, Shopify
• Services apps – UberEats, Delivery.com
• Shopping – Walmart

What is Replacing React Native?

The app development ecosystem is overwhelmed with a plethora of frameworks that are brought in by techies or big techs in the market. Frameworks written in Javascript, Python, C#, PHP are the most popular in the app development domain. 

If we talk about mobile app development in particular, then React Native surely rules the list of top 10 frameworks that we have today. Its popularity can be accounted to the trust in Facebook (its developer), cross-platform development (with native look & feel), code reusability in multiple apps, and other technical features like virtual DOM, and declarative programming, etc. To add to this, the Javascript-powered framework just got better with every public release. 

There are hundreds of positive reasons to choose React Native for app development. But, for any reason, what if its alternative is needed? Well, in that case, we do have some interesting competitors of this app development framework which you can surely rely upon qualitative development. 

Let’s get started.

1. Flutter

Flutter, just like React Native is a cross-platform framework for building native-like apps. It can be used for building beautiful interfaces for iOS and Android with a single codebase, just like React Native. Some of the reasons to choose Flutter over React Native include: 

• Flutter uses Dart programming language for writing the code and has built-in widgets to build an app. Great look & feel with widgets is the number one reason. 
• The popularity and community of Flutter are rapidly growing. Anytime, any problem, you can reach out to the great community members for help. 
• The team Flutter offers excellent documentation to get started with the Flutter framework for app development. 
• No bridging is required between native components and Dart programming language. For that reason, Flutter’s performance is faster than React Native which requires JS bridging when the app interacts with the native component. 

2. Nativescript 

Nativescript, just like React Native is an open-source framework for building native apps. Javascript, Angular, VueJS, and Typescript are the base languages for mobile app development with this Nativescript. 

With this React Native alternative, web development skills (Angular, VueJS, CSS, etc.) can be utilized to build native apps for Android and iOS platforms. Some of the reasons to choose Nativescript over React Native include:

• With Nativescript, developers can use the existing plugins from npm, CocaPods (iOS), and Gradle (Android) directly. Along with this, there are hundreds of verified Nativescript plugins.
• When we talk about development speed, React Native is surely a winner. However, Nativescript is a decent alternate to React Native here with the delivery of fair performance using web programming languages.
• Nativescript is a free and open-source framework for app development. It has got its own community forum where developers can ask and answer questions. 

3. Xamarin 

Xamarin is a framework for cross-platform app development for building Android and iOS apps using .NET and C#. Xamarin is owned by Microsoft and was considered to be the first product launched to resolve the problem of the disconnected technology stack for native app development. 

A couple of reasons that make Xamarin a worthy alternative to React Native include:  

• The benefit of Xamarin is, you can write code for an iPhone app on Windows and then compile it on Mac. There is platform dependency only for the build.
• The look & feel of the app is absolutely native. It has an active community of over 60,000 contributors from more than 3,700 companies.
• Front end development with Xamain powered by Microsoft’s cloud service- Azure makes the duo a combination for complete app development.
• The performance of apps created using Xamarin is equivalent to those of React Native which makes Xamarin one of the finest alternatives to Facebook’s React Native. 

What Are The Features of React Native?

Write Once and Use Everywhere

By far the best feature and actual concept on what is based on, code that is written in React Native works on almost every mobile platform. It includes IOS, Android, Windows, etc. We do not need to write code in Swift for IOS, java for android or C# for windows. The applications built using React native are native, which means, they work on multiple platforms

Programming Language

The programming language of a framework is one important part that influences the developers a lot. If a framework uses a programming language that is popular and widely used, it always influences the choice of a developer. React Native uses one such language, Javascript. No doubt, javascript is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages.

It is one of the three core technologies of the World Wide Web(WWW), the other two being HTML and CSS. Any person with even a little experience in web development knows how to use javascript. Moreover, popular web frameworks are also built on javascript. It is also simple and easy to learn a programming language.

UI Focused

React Native is purely focused on UI design. It is greatly responsive and its rendering abilities are by far the best.

Community

Talking about community, React Native’s community is one of the strongest in the cross-platform mobile application development world. React.js development was started in 2013 by Facebook and it was launched in 2015. Soon it was open-sourced and its popularity increased rapidly. Its popularity was pushed further by the developers contributing from all over the world leading to a strong community presence.

Tried and Trusted

The React Native is one the most trusted framework when it comes to cross-platform application development. Built by an IT giant like Facebook, it is tried enough to be trusted. Facebook uses React Native in all mobile applications. This is enough to trust React Native. Moreover, it used by many other companies such as Instagram Airbnb, Skype, Tesla, Walmart, and Discord.

Development Time

The development time in React Native is considerably short.

Support for Third-Party Libraries

The usage of third-party libraries is always a plus point. This gives the freedom of choice to the developers. This is good and bad at the same time.

NPM for Installation

The installation process is always a headache, especially for newbies. React Native uses Node Package Manager or NPM for installation and it is fairly easy to use it. People with non-javascript are experienced with NPM and also it not that difficult for newbies to learn NPM commands.

Mobile Environments Performance

Most of the native applications are CPU oriented while the applications built using React Native are GPU-oriented. This leads to better performance than CPU-oriented applications.

Live Reload

Now, this is what they call magic in mobile application development. The live reload feature provides two screens, one to modify the code and another to see the modification. Anyone who has experience in mobile application development knows how this feature can make a difference.

How Many Developers Use React Native?

42% of developers choose React Native for building apps, while Flutter is chosen by 39% in 2020. The third popular framework is Cordova which is chosen by only 18%! Flutter has already been used by over 2 mln of developers, and 500,000 use it monthly. The numbers are really impressive, but they mostly depend on the popularity of mobile apps among users.

The matter is, 92% of mobile users spend time with apps and social media, and only 8% use web browsers. For business owners, presenting on all platforms is obligatory, and they won’t miss a chance to attract clients via various channels. 

If you want a more up-close example, you might want to look into some of these companies that use React Native and have been all the more successful for it.

1. Bloomberg

Bloomberg is a finance company that provides tools for equity trading and analytics among other enterprise applications. It’s also the name of their adjacent website which delivers news to inform the public on market and business trends.

The app for Bloomberg has very much the same objective and uses React Native to complete the task. Through React Native, Bloomberg was able to implement automated code refreshes, meaning users will always get the latest updates once opening the app.

2. Facebook

Facebook developed React Native and has built its app using it. Honestly, it would be concerning if they didn’t use the framework for their own applications.

Facebook Ads Manager, a convenient space for individuals and businesses alike to manage advertisements for their products, is built entirely on React Native. It’s cross-platform, yet it handles UI differences when it comes to ad and date formats flawlessly. UI’s animations and transitions meet the same standard.

3. Uber Eats

What started as a means for willing customers to get from point A to point B without paying the often unfriendly prices of a yellow cab soon graduated into a unique way of getting food from point A to point B.

In other words, Uber Eats is a delivery service, similar to Seamless or DoorDash. A small part of the Uber Eats app, specifically, their dashboard owes its existence to React Native.

React Native provided Uber Eats the development tools needed to build an elegant UI, complemented by a smooth UX. Sound and push notifications are also important additions to the app’s dashboard.

4. Airbnb

Airbnb is used as an inexpensive alternative to paying exorbitant hotel prices. Individuals offer up their homes for a couple of days – or sometimes much longer – and Airbnb users can enjoy their vacation with a much smaller price tag.

There is a large handful of developers who use React Native to develop Airbnb’s mobile app. Their most prized feature is the ability to build with reusable code.

5. Discord

Discord is a cherished use case of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) at work. VoIP is just digital communication through the internet.

In Discord, friends and more frequently whole communities can use voice, text, or video to communicate over the internet. It’s entirely free and used mostly by gamers. Because of React Native, the iOS and Android Discord app share 98% of code.

6. Instagram

Instagram is another social networking site, ironically owned by Facebook as of 2012. Unlike Facebook, Instagram’s primary mode of operation is digital photography, and some short videos every now and then.

In 2016, Instagram started seriously thinking about switching to Reactive Native. Integrating React Native with existing technology was a challenge but now they’re able to push features faster and maintain both iOS and Android app versions with ease.

7. Skype

Skype is a VoIP software where video chat is the principal communication style.

But you can also send and receive voice calls and instant messages with Skype. It is the product of Microsoft.

Microsoft recently opted to use Electron after using React Native for a number of years for the Skype mobile app, but not from lack of performance.

While React Native is practical for mobile apps, Microsoft wanted the Skype app to be exactly what you’d get on a desktop. A lot of people are actually disappointed by the change as it took away plenty of useful features like responding to messages from the notification bar and syncing with Outlook.

When Microsoft initially used React Native in 2017, users noticed several favorable upgrades from the icons to a complete redesign of the layout. The consistency between the Android and iOS app was also noted.

8. Pinterest

Pinterest is somewhat a social network, but it’s not particularly used for communication. Instead, people post and pin ideas related to a variety of topics, interior design, and recipes being the most popular subject interests.

Like many companies that use React Native, their choice was dependent on the framework’s capacity to share code from one platform to another. This way, Pinterest could invest in developer productivity in a constructive manner.

9. Salesforce

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform geared towards sales teams. Businesses use Salesforce for marketing, sales, eCommerce, and service.

Einstein – a Salesforce app-building platform for programming a customer service artificial intelligence – can be credited to React Native.

10. Baidu

Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company. Their consumers look to them for internet searches and marketing solutions.

Baidu Mobile, its search engine, is used by over 600 million people in China. And it’s powered by React Native.

Which Company Uses React Native?

1. Facebook – React Native creators

For obvious reasons, Facebook has to be mentioned first. React Native was created by this social media giant during one of their hackathons and they are the main force behind the development of this framework.

The goal was to bring advantages of web development, such as short iterations into mobile development. Originally, React Native was used in the iOS version of the Facebook app but now it provides UI for Android as well. The idea of having one React development team instead of two also played a significant role.

React Native based parts of the app are constantly being optimized. For example, the Event Dashboard performs twice as fast as at the beginning.

2. Facebook Ads – first cross-platform React Native app

The Facebook app wasn’t the first one created with React Native – it was a Facebook Ads app. Initially released on Android (then on iOS), it was the first cross-platform app in the history of React Native development.

Facebook Ads app allows users to run and overview paid marketing campaigns from the smartphone level. It is an extremely useful tool for online marketers around the world.

React Native was a perfect match for this app. It’s extremely complex, as it deals with various ad formats, currencies, forms of payment and time zones.

Overall, the dev team delivered a delightful user experience and proved that React Native can be successfully used in cross-platform development.

3. Instagram – Integrating React Native into an existing native app

Instagram needs no introductions as well. After Facebook acquired this photo-sharing social media platform in 2014 it was just a matter of time before their dev team started rewriting the app. And when they developed React Native in 2015 it was pretty obvious which framework will they choose.

In early 2016, the Instagram team started exploring the possibilities of implementing React Native into existing native apps. They started slowly with the simplest view: Push Notification. Due to satisfying results, they moved further and started working on other parts of the app.

React Native allowed the Instagram dev team to ship features faster to both iOS and Android versions of the app. The percentage of shared code is extremely high: from 85% in the Comment Moderation view to 99% (!) in the Post Promote view.

4. Discord – React Native early adopter

Discord is a voice and text chat app that works on both your desktop and smartphone as a mobile app. It is extremely popular among gamers but plenty of millennials also use Discord for non-gaming purposes as a social media platform.

Discord app was one of the first on the market built with React Native. The company decided to use this technology for their iOS app even before the official release of the framework in 2016.

Taking it from Fanghao Chen from their app development team, React Native has proven to be extremely successful at Discord. It allowed to write reusable code and iterate quickly and efficiently with just a two-person team.

Discord made an attempt to go with React Native on Android. Although they managed to rewrite it in TWO DAYS (!), finally they decided to go with Kotlin. But they went along with React Native on iOS.

5. Walmart – React Native success story from Fortune 500

No introduction is needed here. This retail giant is one of the biggest corporations in the world. With over 500M $ revenue last year, it currently is at the top of the Fortune 500 list.

Read Also: How to Hire a Mobile App Development Company to Build an App?

Walmart’s app has plenty of different features. It allows to do shopping online, find products and check prices in-store, as well as use the Walmart Pay mobile wallet system. Developing such a complex app was quite a challenge for Walmart’s dev team. React Native came in handy.

95% of Walmart’s codebase is shared between iOS and Android apps — cross-platforming worked amazingly well for the company. Working on apps was going on simultaneously for both platforms and allowed to cut the costs of labor in half.

Summary

React Native is a valuable framework that is widely known across the global developer community for accelerating development, reducing the overall software development cost, and using well-known technologies like JavaScript.

With its highly efficient feature of reusing modules and codes, and other essential advantages like stability, hot reloading, and extensive community, React Native is just the best option for mobile app development.