Why is React Nat­ive a great tool for mobile app development?

Are you con­sid­er­ing devel­op­ing a mobile app for your business?

Devel­op­ing two mobile apps for iOS and Android can be expensive.

So what’s the solution?

Answer: Cross Mobile app devel­op­ment Platform.

But there are plenty of plat­forms. Which cross-plat­form to choose? 

Take a look at React Native!

This blog cov­ers everything about React Nat­ive, and you will also get to know what are the bene­fits of mobile app devel­op­ment here. 

In 2021, a report by Statista stated that app stores and in-app advert­ising would gen­er­ate $430.90 bil­lion world­wide by 2022, and that came true! Today, React Nat­ive will be worth $581.9 bil­lion in 2022 and React Nat­ive pop­ular­ity in 2022 would con­tin­ue to grow. 

That’s huge. Right?

But why choose to react to devel­op your cus­tom mobile app? Let’s dive in to learn more about React Nat­ive and its pop­ular­ity. Here, you will also explore why you should con­sider this plat­form for your app. Let’s have a look!

The Pop­ular­ity of React Native

The React Nat­ive frame­work is the second most com­monly used cross-plat­form mobile app devel­op­ment, with a 38% mar­ket share. It is becom­ing one of the most pop­u­lar cost-effect­ive frame­works for build­ing cross-plat­form mobile apps.     

Source: React Nat­ive Pop­ular­ity 

Stats like these are fas­cin­at­ing when look­ing at the most pop­u­lar apps on the App Store and Play Store. In terms of pop­ular­ity, React Nat­ive is ranked third for top mobile app devel­op­ment ser­vices.

Fur­ther­more, React Nat­ive is ranked sev­enth in the Stack Over­flow Developer Sur­vey 2022 with 12.57% of votes. On the pro­fes­sion­al side, React Nat­ive pop­ular­ity in 2022 classed it as fifth with 13.62% votes.

Giant com­pan­ies like Wal­mart, Tesla, Skype, Pin­terest, Uber and Bloomberg have already using React Nat­ive as their mobile applic­a­tion frame­work. It will not slow down any­time soon. But do you know what are the bene­fits of nat­ive mobile app devel­op­ment? Let’s explore it in the next section! 

7 Reas­ons Why You Should Use React Nat­ive To Devel­op Mobile Apps

In the past, React Nat­ive was con­sidered an unus­able product due to its inab­il­ity to be com­mer­cially viable. In addi­tion, there were not enough devel­op­ments or sup­port for React Nat­ive to pro­duce ​“nat­ive-like” apps.

But now, time has changed, and so does React Nat­ive. Today, React Nat­ive has grown up in vari­ous aspects like its mar­ket share, com­munity sup­port, and pop­ular­ity. Many developers are using it to devel­op bril­liant applic­a­tions over a short period.

Here are some reas­ons why you should con­sider React Nat­ive when devel­op­ing your next mobile app. Let’s have a look!

#1. Uni­fied Code­base For Two Platforms

Using React Nat­ive, developers can devel­op Android and iOS plat­forms apps from one code­base. In addi­tion to work­ing, it com­piles nat­ive Java and Swift code. By bridging web UI com­pon­ents and their nat­ive Java/Swift coun­ter­parts, React Nat­ive fills the gap between web and nat­ive app development.

For example, typ­ic­ally, developers spend hours inspect­ing their code and find­ing errors when they debug it. The task becomes more chal­len­ging if silly syn­tax errors can­not appear clearly.

With React, how­ever, there is no need to spend more time find­ing bugs. A single code­base makes fix­ing a single bug pos­sible for the entire sys­tem. Moreover, the frame­work comes with debug­ging tools like Nuclide.

Also Read: React Nat­ive Tutori­als — Learn to Build React Nat­ive Apps

#2. Grow­ing All The Time

React Nat­ive is under­go­ing a lot of work. In addi­tion to Face­book, the massive React Nat­ive com­munity is con­stantly work­ing on improv­ing the frame­work. So if a developer faces a spe­cif­ic issue in cod­ing and fails to find any solu­tion on the com­munity plat­form, he has to put the prob­lem on the for­um. The com­munity has tried to solve it for some time.

Microsoft even cre­ated a fork of React Nat­ive for Win­dows after tak­ing notice of React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment ser­vices. Their solu­tion sim­pli­fies the pro­cess of devel­op­ing Win­dows 10 apps, Win­dows 10 mobile apps, and Xbox One apps. These applic­a­tions focus on increas­ing the developer­’s effi­ciency in less time. 

#3. Reusable Code And Pre-Built Components

Cross-plat­form mobile app devel­op­ment allows the same code to be reused on iOS and Android phones. The same prin­ciple applies to React Nat­ive as well. As a res­ult, it adheres to the notion of ​“write once, launch everywhere.”.

In this way, developers can work more con­veni­ently. As a res­ult, they don’t have to make sep­ar­ate plat­form-spe­cif­ic designs for build­ing the same app. Moreover, an organ­iz­a­tion can cre­ate a mobile app using most of the code from its web application.

Also Read: React Nat­ive Upgrade Help­er : App Upgrades with Ease

#4. Gives A nat­ive-like experience

With React Nat­ive, you can use nat­ive ele­ments for your mobile applic­a­tion. You can also com­bine JavaS­cript with the nat­ive user inter­face using React Nat­ive. And this res­ults in apps look­ing and work­ing like nat­ive apps, enhan­cing the user experience. 

As React works the same on iOS and Android, the users will expect a sim­il­ar look and feel across both plat­forms. In addi­tion, developers can write React and nat­ive code togeth­er to get sim­il­ar func­tion­al­ity. As a res­ult, apps with this fea­ture appear more ​“nat­ive-like.”.

#5. Build Stable And High-Per­form­ing Apps

With React Nat­ive, the bind­ing strategy for the code­base gets sim­pli­fied. As a res­ult, the object’s state must get mod­i­fied before apply­ing updates to one thing. That will make devel­op­ing a stable and reli­able applic­a­tion easi­er than fol­low­ing oth­er cross-plat­form devel­op­ment approaches.

The React Nat­ive frame­work is one of the best solu­tions for build­ing a new mobile applic­a­tion. How­ever, it can also be used to add a simple view or user flow to an exist­ing nat­ive program. 

The power to add React Nat­ive fea­tures, views, and screens to your cus­tom mobile applic­a­tion is now avail­able at your fin­ger­tips. It fur­ther helps developers to cre­ate robust-per­form­ing applic­a­tions using React Nat­ive instead of Webview.

#6. Devel­op Apps Faster 

Over half a dec­ade after its intro­duc­tion, React Nat­ive is finally thriv­ing with sup­port from online com­munit­ies. Today, thou­sands of rel­ev­ant com­pon­ents are already using React Nat­ive to devel­op their cus­tom mobile apps avail­able from scratch.

The applic­a­tions cre­ated through React Nat­ive are less likely to con­tain bugs since they have a single code fea­ture. Enter­prises are cre­at­ing a Min­im­um Viable Product (MVP) with this soft­ware. With MVP, developers can launch an app with the bare min­im­um func­tion­al­ity and add all the oth­er fea­tures later on as their enter­prises grow.

Thus, you can wait and build addi­tion­al fea­tures per the app’s require­ment rather than wast­ing time and resources on con­struct­ing detailed inter­faces in one go. 

#7. Code Push: Update Apps Without Going To The App Stores

Some­times, a developer may real­ize they need to add a minor fea­ture after deploy­ing the app on the App Store or Play Store and want to tweak it. In Nat­ive app devel­op­ment, developers need to repeat the entire build­ing pro­cess of applic­a­tions and then upload the updated ver­sions to the app store. 

How­ever, to do so, they need to get approv­al from Apple and Google. Once approved, they have to ask users to install them manu­ally. Developers can deploy mobile updates to end users instantly. But React has a CodePush option. The CodePush serv­er syn­chron­izes JavaS­cript code with updates released to any app stores, allow­ing end users not to update their app manually. 

Many of React Nat­ive’s growth can be attrib­uted to the reas­ons men­tioned above. Let’s see wheth­er this frame­work ful­fills your require­ment or not.

Is React Nat­ive Good For Your Project?

With com­munity sup­port and mar­ket share, React Nat­ive has become a pop­u­lar tool. In addi­tion, React Nat­ive allows developers to build excel­lent mobile apps. 

Here are a few things that help under­stand the bene­fits of React Native:

#1. One Code­base For Two Plat­forms: Sav­ings In Time And Money

React Nat­ive is the best tool if one needs to cre­ate both iOS and Android apps. A study found that mobile app devel­op­ment com­pan­ies can be more effi­cient and pro­duct­ive by redu­cing time and money spent on code­base by 95%. 

Addi­tion­ally, React Nat­ive offers sev­er­al open-source lib­rar­ies of pre­b­uilt com­pon­ents that can help the developer to speed up the pro­ject development.

#2. Cre­ate Great Mobile Apps: Great Devel­op­ment Speed

The React Nat­ive frame­work is excel­lent for mobile apps. Its slick, smooth, and respons­ive user inter­face sig­ni­fic­antly reduces load­ing times. Addi­tion­ally, React Nat­ive allows developers to build apps much faster and cheap­er than nat­ive ones without com­prom­ising func­tion­al­ity or quality. 

So when are you adopt­ing React nat­ive as a tool to devel­op your cus­tom­ized mobile applications?

#3. Hot And Live Reload­ing: Bet­ter Debug­ging Experience

React Nat­ive provides live reload­ing as part of its core func­tion­al­ity. It enables developers to fix code changes as they get loaded in real-time. Hot reloads only reload spe­cif­ic areas, while live reloads auto­mat­ic­ally reload the entire applic­a­tion after every change. 

As a res­ult, the devel­op­ment and test­ing pro­cess gets sim­pli­fied, and so does the deploy­ment of applic­a­tions on dif­fer­ent platforms. 

#4. Nat­ive Apps And Views: Rich And Flu­id User Interface

React Nat­ive provides pre-built declar­at­ive com­pon­ents, like but­tons, pick­ers, sliders, switches, and more, to help developers build enga­ging and cre­at­ive UIs. In addi­tion, developers can cre­ate their com­pon­ents using Touch­ableN­at­ive­Feed­back and TouchableOpacity. 

The applic­a­tion works effi­ciently on iOS and Android mobile devices thanks to vari­ous Android and iOS-spe­cif­ic components. 

An example would be:

• For iOS devices: The developer can use Seg­men­ted­Con­troli­OS, UIIm­agePicker­Con­trol­ler iOS, and DatePickeriOS.
• For Android devices: The developer can choose Drawer­Lay­outAndroid, DateP­ick­er­Android, and ViewPageAndroid.

#5. Future-Ori­ent­a­tion

We can expect React Nat­ive to be around for a long time. With the help of these file exten­sions, plat­forms can identi­fy the oper­at­ing sys­tem on which the apps are run­ning. It is flex­ible since any developer can under­stand the applic­a­tion’s code. Access­ing the app requires no core development. 

Instead, app developers strive to provide mil­len­ni­als with quick inform­a­tion and excel­lent mobile app exper­i­ences. With every passing moment, it becomes more future-ori­ented by min­im­iz­ing its complexity. 

The con­tinu­ous bug fix­ing and excit­ing fea­tures make React Nat­ive the first choice for cross-plat­form apps. Com­pared to its com­pet­it­ors, it has a light­weight archi­tec­ture, pre-built com­pon­ents, and an easy learn­ing curve.

Con­clu­sion

React Nat­ive is in the top 5 for the most pre­ferred cross-plat­form tech­no­logy. Many apps use React Nat­ive, includ­ing Face­book, Ins­tagram, Pin­terest, Bloomberg, Sales­force, and Walmart. 

Also, React Nat­ive mobile apps help enable you to adopt a hybrid mobile app devel­op­ment frame­work. In light of all these advant­ages, choos­ing the right React Nat­ive app devel­op­ment ser­vices is import­ant to grow and mar­ket your products, ser­vices, and busi­ness modules. 

Read more about React Nat­ive vs Swift: Will React Nat­ive Replace Swift? and Hybrid Mobile App Frame­work: The Future of App Development