I've been tinkering with this for a while, so gather'round folks - today I want to talk a bit about #reactnative and "market share" 🍰
One of the problems I tend to have every now and then is to quantify and understand how widespread @reactnative ⚛️ in the vast app world... 🧵
I'm a rational (lol) human (lol x2) - so what I like is good sources giving me good hard numbers 🧮
Wouldn't it be nice to have just a quick & easy table, and you can just read there how many apps in production are using RN (or any other tech, for what's worth)?
well... it's not that easy. For #iOS and #Android there's not a way (that I'm aware of) to just "kindly ask" for this type of metrics to Apple and Google about apps in their stores.
So, over time, I made a list of sources that I can kind-of-almost trust, to get my "data fix":
First up, we have @StatistaCharts. They are the most comprehensive resource of charts and data... and I keep an eye on a few in particular:
1️⃣ statista.com/topics/1729/app-stores/
2️⃣ statista.com/statistics/271644/worldwide-free-and-paid-mobile-app-store-downloads/
3️⃣ statista.com/statistics/604343/number-of-apple-app-store-and-google-play-app-downloads-worldwide/
These 3 help giving broad context of how things go in 📲
On top of those, I also keep handy these two, but I take them more with a 🧂🤏
4️⃣ statista.com/statistics/869224/worldwide-software-developer-working-hours/
5️⃣ statista.com/statistics/793840/worldwide-developer-survey-most-used-frameworks/
Knowing trends among developers is just a "good to have", and it's not a 1:1 to market distribution.
I also keep my eyes on @appfigures. They are not quite as easy to navigate as Statista, but from time to time they publish insights with data they collect, such as this appfigures.com/resources/insights/20210910?f=5 👇
(I just wish those numbers weren't only embedded in a figure)
But still, for me that's not enough. So I also have bookmarked this page from @TheAppBrain: appbrain.com/stats/libraries/details/react_native/react-native
I'm not quite sure how they collect their data (there's a gist you can read on the page), so again 🧂🤏
(and it's Android only, but oh well we take what we can)
Another "true" data point that I keep an eye on is then (maybe unsurprinsigly), the # of dependents in the @github repo 👇 github.com/facebook/react-native/network/dependents
Sure, not quite as good as production numbers, but it's a good number to get an idea of how widespread the project is (for js ones)
Similarly (thanks to @nick_gerleman!) I keep an eye on the npm downloads numbers via rn-versions.github.io/
It provides a broad range of numbers across different npm packages (like Expo, RNWeb, RNWindows, etc), so it feels like being able to see the 🫀-beat of the RN community.
To close off this list, two ✨bonus links✨
I don't use them to gauge the state of things, but in their own way they provide some insights - in particular when compared to other libs:
📭 the open issues count github.com/facebook/react-native/issues
🏪 the showcase page reactnative.dev/showcase
A couple more things, closing:
☝️ yes, I only focused my attention here on mobile (iOS and Android) market
✌️ if you have any other sources that you like to use to get a sense of scale for #reactnative, link it here! (in particular around iOS 🤣)
in case you liked this or found it useful, let me know 🙏
Maybe next time we can actually go through some of the numbers contained in those resources and see if they fit and make sense? 🤓
If it's something you'd like - tell me! and I'll try make a 🧵 about it 🤗