Why React Native makes more business sense for most use case scenarios?

This article was originally posted on our company website. TechVariable is a Digital Transformation studio for corporates around the world.

As we all might have heard someplace or the other about technologies such as ReactJS, React Native or the Native development for any agile software, mobile app development process or product development. While there’s no such perfect universal programming language, each language compiles differently with a particular task better than another language.

Let’s now straightaway look at some of the few perks of using React Native which is a powerful JavaScript framework allowing writing, debugging and deploying for both Android and iOS mobile applications with Native experience. Hence, this framework can be described as the combination of all the advantages of JavaScript, React and is powerfully backed by Facebook.

There are some interesting cases of companies converting to Native environments are coming up later in this blog.

Now don’t get confused with React JS here, in simplest terms, it’s the proposed solution committed to delivering a better mobile experience to the users and in the meantime allowing developers to build their native mobile apps in the most efficient manner.

React Native allows sharing more than 80% of codes between both Android and iOS devices which altogether results in 5x faster front-end and agile software development than any other traditional means. This pace has been proven and accepted by renowned industry giants such as Facebook, Discord, LinkedIn, SoundCloud, etc.

Here’s an intuitive case study on how our team manoeuvred React Native for developing a mobile app and overall bringing Digital Transformation.

Advantages of React Native Technology

Now, just like any other technology keeping aside the shortcomings (or scope for improvement, we will come to that later in this blog), let’s look through the major advantages of using this technology and why React Native is referred to as the premier choice for mobile app development.

1. The ‘Native Feel’

React Native prevents sacrificing the true ‘Native’ look-and-feel of any application and through the use of their native components such as the outlook of their respective icons, interfaces in Android and iOS devices. The developers can also use platform-specific languages as they want and are able to create full-fledged apps for any operating system via Bridging. Also, having the entire framework open-sourced, makes React Native highly preferable for the mobile app development industry and also for building user-friendly and attractive app interfaces. Though some parts still need to be adjusted while reusing codes but the consistency stays commendable.

2. It's cross-platform compatible

React Native is a cross-platform compatible language, so we can easily write codes in Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, Swift and use it easily in our app. Even though we need to maintain separate code-bases for every code-base written here, these cross-platform limitations can be partially dealt with by using the shared code and with a few tools.

3. Time and cost-saving

Not exaggerating, but as we all know how crucial a budget stands out in terms of project management, the big news is generally we save around one-fourth of the project budget by using React Native for the development of any big project, yes, with of course help from the web development team.

4. Quicker Ramp-up

If you’re someone who’s just starting with React Native but have a stronghold of Javascript and the React syntax, then you’re already halfway through it in learning this new language. The learning curve tends to become smoother and within a short period of time, you will be able to tactfully master in development of mobile apps for both Android and iOS devices with the codebase.

Advantages of Native App Development Technology

While we talked about the significance of React Native, let us now direct our focus towards native app development with its advantages and why it can compete with React Native.

1. Better performance of an app

Development and deployment of native mobile apps for either iOS or Android imply one codebase, viz. Java for Android; Objective-C or Swift for iOS. No doubt, smooth UI design is quite doable when using React Native for cross-platform application development. However, Native App Development is always the king when it comes to quality in the performance of certain types of Android or native iOS apps combined with rich custom UI and animations.

2. Strictness is not that bad

At first, the need to create two different applications for iOS and Android using their proprietary languages could seem to be a clear downside. It is not so! Once you begin digging deeper, you’re to get the important value of the native app development. Though the strictness of the languages used levels out the likelihood of the infinite data structures and lazy evaluation as such; it provides a clear code and a neater debug process helping the avoidance of unwanted effects.

3. Documentation availability

What hybrid solutions lack is extremely good and thorough documentation. If this is your first time setting up or testing these React Native apps, this might get a bit frustrating. On the other hand, when performing on the native projects, we need to make sure with every new change being incorporated into the system, we need to receive updated documentation to start all over again.

4. API access

To be specific, its application programming interfaces (APIs) that make applications look and feel native which give access to all the tools and frameworks created for any individual platform. Being a neighbourhood of the platform SDK, they supply the hardware-software integration, sharing media data with no network connection and such. Therefore, there are optimal methods of linking applications to the needed features via available programming interfaces.

React Native — the best option from a business perspective

Every business has its unique needs and they can hire any development company with different levels of skills, it’s not mandatory that a framework that fits one startup also be perfect for another. To give you better clarity, here we’ll check out different challenges that startups face within the whole mobile app development scenario and the way the technology is often the proper solution. So, here we go.

1. No Target Audience

A maximum number of startups fail to understand who their target audience is and the right market to target for gaining higher ROIs. Also, a major dilemma they need to brainstorm is “Android vs iOS: Which Platform is Better for Mobile Startups?”, as, without proper research, they might end up targeting the wrong users. Facebook’s React Native provides them with a clear answer to this question by empowering them to focus on both platforms at an equivalent time.

2. Higher Efforts

Many startups, with lower to no technical knowledge, fail at managing two different teams for making their app available on both Android and iOS at the same place. They need to put extra effort into the hiring process, which makes it tough for them to focus on other important aspects piling more into their estimated budgets. React Native app development acts like the miraculous solution to this present startup challenge by curbing the necessity of two different teams.

3. Limited Funds

React Native app development is inexpensive in comparison to Native mobile app development. This helps the startups to successfully build mobile apps even with the limited budgets in their hands.

4. Doubt of Launch

With the growing competition within the market, startups face the challenge of when and the way to launch a mobile application on Android and iOS platforms and gain higher ROI. React Native, in this scenario, helps them to launch a mobile app on both platforms at the earliest.

In this competitive environment, many companies, focusing on revenue-generating activities, opt for mobile applications as targeted advertising channels. Consequently, even if the application remains the same, for better efficiency, it must be responsive, i.e. equally supported both on iOS and Android devices.

The two options for you, whose upsides we’ve highlighted above, may not equally well suit your business needs but when cost-efficiency is the priority, React Native is the best way to achieve it. On the other hand, this is only one criterion to be matched while choosing the final route as other primary factors such as team proficiency, time limits and the project scope also need to be considered for the best-case scenario.

React Native is like providing the opportunity to small businesses in creating mobile apps differently than what was deemed impossible a decade ago. As mentioned here is an interesting case of a renowned company switching to React Native environment.

Walmart: This retail giant is currently at the top of the Fortune 500 list with a turnover of around 559B US $. The Walmart app has ample features, say we can do online shopping, browse for products and check prices in-store and even proceed with the payment using Walmart Pay mobile wallet system. With features as such, the entire credit can be given to React Native for developing such a complex app by Walmart’s development team, where 95% of the codebase has been shared between iOS and Android apps allowing cross-platform compatibility. This worked amazingly well and allowed cost-cutting in terms of labour and friction to almost half.

As a categorical superstore where one can find almost everything, it’s quite exaggerating yet true as they have been reported to accept that they required only one Javascript team for developing such a complicated platform.

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