A mobile app is one of the most crucial platforms for customers to stay connected to a company and utilize its services. An app will be accessed and used innumerable times by users, provided they benefit from each visit. Certain parameters like a smooth transition from one page to the other, faster downloading of data, improved features, shorter development cycles, quicker time to deployment, and better app performance, etc. are all things to be taken care of when activating an app for customers. With the immense usage of mobile phones, companies find it imperative to have mobile apps as part of their core platform strategy. While some businesses are primarily driven by mobile apps, others are focused on both mobile and web streams. The latter is considered to be tricky for a number of reasons. Firstly, companies end up compromising on the app as conventionally the focus has been on the web. Secondly, apps require a separate development effort for Android and iOS if the company is taking the native route. These issues can be easily ruled out through React Native.

The best part of React Native is that it does not compromise on the quality of the app. Some of the very popular apps from well-known brands like Instagram, Netflix, Airbnb and Bloomberg have clearly demonstrated the success with this approach. Following are some of the clear benefits –

• React Native allows usage of the same code for deployment on iOS as well as on Android. This helps in saving development time and cost.
• React Native uses native controls thus ensuring that experience is not compromised. Because of native controls, the performance is also great. Many of the cross platform solutions use webView for rendering, which lowers the overall experience. This is a real big benefit as it empowers companies to push the latest code to the end users without forcing them to upgrade the app.
• As React Native runs the JavaScript code via the main bundle, React Native apps with an integration of code push gives the power to update the main bundles without going through the delay caused by app stores.
• Since React Native is JavaScript based, it can be quickly learnt by experienced JS developers for the web after which inter-operability of engineers across web and app is easily possible. This also helps in debugging the application very easily with standard JS debuggers like Chrome debugger.
• The Live Reload feature in React Native enables one to see the result of the latest change done to the code

It is admirable to see that this ecosystem of React Native is expanding very fast, both in terms of support of more and more native controls as well as the community. I believe that with the promises and benefits it brings to the table, it has a bright future and many of the companies’ app development style will change from platform specific native development to cross-platform react native development.