React Native's New Rival Is Quietly Eating Its Lunch
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - AI Is Everywhere. Check out the full article for more insights.
I keep writing about AI because it's pretty much everywhere at this point, so let me look at something else that's also interesting - non-native app development on the App Store.
React Native and Flutter have become the de facto standard for non-native app development (not games), but there's a new kid on the block: Kotlin Multiplatform.
Maybe not that new, but new enough.
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) was announced all the way back in 2017, but didn't really reach production until late 2023. Two years in, has KMP made it into the mainstream?
I analyzed the top 10,000 apps (not games) on the App Store to answer that question, but before I can do that, I have to give you a number that might surprise (or delight) you: 7%.
That's the share of iOS apps, not including games, that use React Native (RN) or Flutter and are available on the App Store.
With that in mind, let's see how KMP stacks against those two. To keep things serious, I'm going to focus on the top 10,000 apps (not games) by monthly downloads.
Based on data from Appfigures Explorer, 1,350 of the top 10,000 use RN, 1,184 use Flutter, and 218 use KMP. There's a big gap in usage, but what KMP lacks in numbers it makes up for in performance.
FYI - "using" a framework means having it in the app's bundle and not necessarily building the entire app with it.
Together, the three frameworks were responsible for 375M estimated downloads last month. Apps using RN accounted for 47% of those downloads, while Flutter accounted for 38%, and KMP accounted for 14%. RN's dominance is hard to beat, but low double-digits is a great place to be. And when we look at revenue, things look even more interesting.
Apps using these frameworks earned $462M after fees, according to Appfigures Intelligence, and while RN was still the dominant framework, the distribution is a bit different. Apps with RN accounted for 41% of that total, while Flutter accounted for 32% and KMP for a surprising 27%.
KMP still has a long way to grow to get to RN or Flutter adoption levels, but if we zoom out, it's clear that non-native development on the App Store is growing.
Which is your favorite?
P.S. - We started tracking Swift for Android, so if/when it takes off, I'll let you know. Don't hold your breath, though.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
