8 Famous Companies Using React Native
Using a single technology to build cross-platform apps that also deliver on performance used to seem like a far-fetched notion. However, today it is very much a reality. React Native, the open-sourced framework by Facebook enables developers to create native mobile applications for iOS and Android. The framework offers many advantages, not least development using the universal programming language, JavaScript, and the ability to reuse code across different platforms.
With its growing popularity, global companies large and small are now using React Native for their mobile apps. Here we’ll highlight eight of the most well-known React Native apps and why industry leaders are turning to the technology.
Why is React Native So Popular?
React Native aims to bring the power of React, the popular web library, to mobile app development. It offers developers three core advantages:
- Faster development – as developers can use the same code base across both Android and iOS apps, they are able to get solutions to market much more quickly.
- Lower cost – as only one development team is required and there is a host of open-source UI components available, React Native makes development significantly cheaper.
- Easier maintenance – finding and resolving errors across several platforms is much simpler. What’s more, developers don’t have to wait for app recompilation every time the code is changed, which makes upgrades faster than other frameworks.
Companies Using React Native
Many famous companies ,including corporate giants in the worlds of social networking and transport, have turned to React Native for at least a part of their app experience. Here are eight companies that have used the cross-platform framework along with how they have benefitted.
1. Facebook
React Native was the result of a hackathon project in response to Facebook’s needs. The company wanted to bring together the advantages of web development, such as using a single development team and being able to iterate quickly. While only developed originally to support iOS, it was then expanded to support Android. One of the major benefits was fast-loading content, with the dashboard startup time becoming twice as fast as before. An additional benefit is the smooth interaction with components written in Objective-C, Java or Swift, making it easy to drop down to native code to optimise certain aspects of the application.
2. Instagram
While they already had a high-performing app, Instagram wanted to increase the speed of their development team. They tried React Native as a way to ship code more quickly in the native Android and iOS app. Starting with push notifications, they soon rewrote other parts of the app, such as products and post promotion. With 90% of the code reused across both platforms they could ship features much more quickly and prompted a wave of other companies to start using React Native.
3. Bloomberg
The Bloomberg app was built for iOS and Android using React Native with a view to offering personalised content. The team was able to build near-native apps quickly and easily, focusing on one feature at a time, thanks to the shared framework. The development team was exponentially faster while the UI of the apps remained smooth. The company also leveraged the benefits of automated code refreshes with no need for code recompiling.
4. Walmart
The Walmart app used to consist of web views embedded on its mobile app. However, suffering from performance and user experience issues, the supermarket corporation decided to rewrite its application with native development. As the original web app was made using react, React Native was an obvious choice. Using React Native eliminated the need for knowledge sharing, productivity soared, and 95% of code was shared between the iOS and Android platforms.
5. Wix
The popular web hosting and web design company had a web application for many years before opting to build a mobile app. The team were facing challenges around scalability with a rapidly growing user base. However, developer speed was decreasing and testing was time-consuming. React Native offered a multi-module architecture that led to faster development and increased app performance.
6. Pinterest
The team at Pinterest spent a long time studying React Native before taking the leap. Their first step was then to build prototypes using React Native to ensure it was possible to use the cross-platform framework. Development time was incredibly quick, thanks to an amazing 100% of shared UI code across the two platforms. However, there was no compromise on quality and they still use native code for some of the screens that require performance optimisation.
7. UberEats
As UberEats was initially built for the web with its restaurant dashboard, the development team was experienced in using React. Instead of leaning on a different technology, React Native was a wise choice. While they have only used React Native in a few parts of their app, they were able to revamp the dashboard to create a great user experience for the restaurants registered with them.
8. SoundCloud
One of the first companies to adopt React Native, SoundCloud created their Pulse app with the framework. They opted for React Native as they didn’t want to have a huge gap between the release of their iOS and Android apps. The result was faster development compared to native and the ability to build the app independently without input from specialised mobile development teams.
The Benefits of Using React Native
As many well-known companies have shown, building cross-platform apps using a single code base can be very advantageous. Developers can become more productive, build faster and test more easily. What’s more, there is no need to compromise with the UI of the apps, the efficiency that React Native offers is near-native. React Native apps are powerful and modern, development is fast and effective and they can quickly help businesses reach new customers across different platforms.