React Native: The Future of Mobile at Shopify
Article Summary
Farhan Thawar from Shopify reveals why they're betting the company's mobile future on React Native. With 71% of purchases happening on mobile, this wasn't a decision made lightly.
In early 2020, Shopify announced a major strategic shift: all new mobile apps would be built with React Native instead of native development. After years of native iOS and Android work, the VP of Engineering explains the calculated risks, real-world experiments, and performance benchmarks that led to this company-wide decision.
Key Takeaways
- Teams achieved 95-99% code sharing between iOS and Android (vs. expected 80%)
- Arrive app rewrite: developers felt 2x more productive than native development
- React Native now viable on hardware as low as 1.5GHz CPU
- Native iOS engineers still essential for platform components and performance work
Critical Insight
Shopify validated React Native's maturity through three production apps in 2019, finding it doubled developer productivity while maintaining performance standards for their massive mobile commerce platform.
