What is React Native?

React Native is a framework that allows you to build native mobile apps using JavaScript. Normally, you’d need to program your mobile app using Java (for Android) and Swift/Obj-C (for iOS). React Native removes that requirement, leading to fully functional apps on both platforms in much less time and using just one coding language.

Is React Native an entirely new invention? Not exactly. The framework was developed only a few years ago, by a social media company you may have heard of…

Facebook is the company behind both ReactJS and React Native. In fact, Facebook first created React to build the social platform we all love to hate. After further development, Facebook released ReactJS for the web as open source.

But Facebook was still struggling with their mobile app. They needed to maintain two codebases: one for iOS, one for Android. Features implemented in Swift on iOS had to be implemented separately in Java on Android, leading to work duplication and asymmetrical apps.

React Native neatly solves that problem.

oming on the heels of ReactJS, the purpose of React Native was to facilitate the creation of mobile apps. It’s simple: if you can code an app once in JavaScript and deploy it both to Android and iOS, your life gets a lot easier.

If you’ve ever used the official Facebook app on Android or iOS, you’ve seen React Native in action. (Same goes for the mobile Airbnb app.)

How popular is React Native in terms of market share?

React Native is rising in popularity as a convenient solution to build cross-platform mobile apps with less strain on your budget.
How popular is it, exactly?
Take a look at React Native’s market share:
Not bad.
The stats are especially telling when you consider the top apps in the App Store and Google Play Store right now. Among the top 500 apps in the US, 14.85% of installed apps are built with React Native.
In fact, in the category of top US apps, React Native is the third most popular framework, right after Kotlin and Android Architecture Components.`

Why use React Native?

For a long time, React Native was considered to be commercially unviable. It wasn’t developed or supported enough to produce “native-like” apps.
But the times have changed. React Native is gaining popularity, gaining community support, and gaining more market share. It’s getting easier and easier to write brilliant apps using React Native—and the world is taking notice.

Tried and trusted

Facebook built React Native first and foremost to create a fantastic mobile app for their own social portal. More likely than not, you’ve used it on your phone by way of the Facebook mobile app. Does it feel like a native app? Sure it does.
But since React Native has gone open-source, more companies have decided to bet on it and create their mobile apps this way. Here are just a few examples.

What’s an example of a React Native app?

Bloomberg, the business and financial news provider, decided to use React Native to create its new consumer app after initial testing and prototyping.
Previously, Bloomberg engineers had to develop iOS and Android versions separately, without being able to share the code they created. Switching to React Native saved them time as they could unify their development capabilities and each developer could focus on one feature at a time. As a result, the team managed to create the new app in five months—about half the usual development time.
Using React Native also allowed the company to add a number of new, interactive features to the app, such as the ability to swipe a headline to share or bookmark an article. Users can also access live TV and on-demand event feeds.
The app allows users to customize it extensively, including personalizing content according to their interests and location, and monitoring their own personal portfolios.
The React Native design automates code refreshes and, instead of recompiling, it reloads the app instantly.
According to a senior software engineer at Bloomberg who worked on the transition, “React Native is the best out there,” and the company would be using it again in other mobile apps.

Final thoughts

So what should you know about React Native? Here are the key takeaways:
- If you’re using the Facebook or Airbnb mobile app, you’re using React Native without even knowing it.
- React Native apps are easy to write, saving time for developers and cutting costs for project managers.
- React Native apps lower your development and maintenance costs, because you don’t have to deal with two separate codebases for iOS and Android.
- Since React Native is just a wrapper for native components, there’s nothing stopping you from adding native Java or Swift code where you need it.
- At the end of the day, you’re still coding in JavaScript. There’s no need to learn Swift/Java, or to add developers with such skills to your roster.
- React Native is growing fast with no signs of stopping.