HACKER Q&A
📣 brundolf

Could React Native lower the moat enough for a third mobile OS?


Purely speculation, but I remember one of the main things that killed Windows Phone was a lack of app-developer interest in porting/maintaining apps on a third, unproven platform. Microsoft played around with making some auto-translation tools, but it never really took off.

With React Native becoming a lingua franca for mobile development, could Microsoft or someone else give it another try at some point? If the OS developers implemented their own React Native target, a bunch of app developers' apps could be compatible almost for free. The OS could even be specifically tailored to integrating well with React Native

Thoughts?

  👤 MBCook Accepted Answer ✓
I don’t think RN is becoming the lingua franca for apps at all. That seems like a massive overstatement.

But I don’t think the language matters. Momentum is just too high.

The market, at least in most of Asia, Europe, and North America is saturated with smartphones. The only way to get reasonable numbers is most customers have to be converts from the existing players. Let’s ignore other things that make the platforms sticky (Google Assistant, iMessage, whatever). You still have apps.

Your new phone won’t have apps. No apps means no users. No users means no developer interest means no apps. It’s a vicious cycle. You need to bootstrap.

Palm and MS couldn’t do it back when the market wasn’t saturated, even paying money like MS did.

Not everyone uses FB or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. But missing those four alone will probably doom your phone. Plus streaming services. Can you give away enough money to those companies to get them to care about your platform for a few years? Uber and Lyft?

And it’s been a long time since MS tried that. Since then there are billions more apps. Banks, credit cards, rent payment, games, utilities, restaurants, so much more. Even if you get the big boys onboard I think many people wouldn’t switch because of the long tail.

Basically we’re at the point that I think network effects make having a third viable platform impossible outside some very large external force, such as a mandate from an authoritarian government like China that everyone must use some new OS they create.