#react native software development company

"What went wrong" is probably multifaceted but I think a big part of it is that they have their own version of the Google problem: cloud computing and enterprise just makes too much money and there's no reason to devote effort to anything else. Windows is now basically a legacy product: even though it was never sold or anything, it exists in a "PE leveraged buyout" state where the goal is to get as much money as possible out of it during the inevitable decline. The hardware experiment was just too expensive and not showing the results they wanted.

In the rapidly evolving digital economy, companies need to be able to scale quickly without impacting performance, efficiency or the customer experience. The ability to scale is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s a business imperative. Scalability allows an organization to increase its capacity, broaden its activities, and maintain consistent levels of service and quality of work. But growing isn't just a question of turning on more resources. It is a blend of technical aspects, more efficient workflows and being proactive with long term perspectives. Businesses that don’t plan for this are the ones that end up hitting bottlenecks, slowdowns and lost revenue. This blog delves into some important technical and process aspects that are likely to impact enterprises intending to scale up, ranging from infrastructure design to operational workflow fine-tuning through to strategic enterprise planning.

Understanding Scalability

Build for growth At a high level, scalability represents an organization’s ability to increase revenue, operations, or market size at a rate faster than its cost increases. A scalable business is one that can take on more business, attract more customers, or have more transactions without having to grow its operations accordingly.

Significant Indicators of Scalability

● Ability to handle higher customer traffic without downtime.

● Efficient utilization of resources as operations expand.

● Flexible processes that adapt to evolving market conditions.

● Sustainable growth without quality compromise. Scalable solutions are about technology and process maturity, and they are both complex. While technology, infrastructure, are critical, so too are clearly defined workflows, operational discipline, and strategic planning.

✅ Engineering Analysis

Preparing Your Business for Sca…

The Engineering Analysis section explains how to build a technical environment that supports business scalability. It highlights five key pillars:

1. Cloud Solutions

Scale computing power instantly based on demand.

Global reach, high availability, and cost-effective resource usage.

Supports vertical + horizontal scaling with containers and modular systems.

2. Scalable Software Architecture

Use modular/SOA or microservices design.

Load balancing to distribute traffic.

Distributed or cloud-native databases (e.g., Cloud Spanner).

Caching layers to reduce database load and improve response time.

3. Automation & Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

IaC tools automatically deploy & manage infrastructure.

CI/CD pipelines for faster development & releases.

Automated monitoring + alerting to detect issues early.

4. Data Management

Use cloud data warehouses for large datasets.

Support real-time data processing.

Use replication + partitioning.

Maintain data security & compliance while scaling.

5. Customer-Centric Scalability

Maintain service quality during high demand.

Use support tools & automation for onboarding.

Provide self-service options to reduce load.

CONCLUSION

🤖 Tech Buddy’s Final Takeaway on Scalability

Scalability isn’t just a bonus anymore — it’s a must-have for any business that wants long-term success 🚀. To grow smoothly without slowing down, companies must build strong technical systems, streamline smart processes, and think strategically about the future 📈.

Using cloud platforms ☁️, modular software 🧩, and automation ⚙️, organizations can handle rising demand while keeping performance strong and customers happy 😄. Strategic planning ensures teams stay ahead instead of reacting to problems later 🧠✨.

Bridge Group Solutions partners with businesses to build scalable infrastructure, boost process efficiency, and strengthen enterprise planning 🏗️. With the right mix of technology + workflows, companies can grow confidently, grab new opportunities 💼🌟, and maintain a strong, competitive market position.

The world of app development is getting cutthroat, with new ideas and innovations coming to the fore regularly. The ease at which mobile apps can be developed has also led to an explosion in the number of developers creating them. Now, every startup is looking for ways to make their app stand out from the crowd and attract users to increase their reach.

 With this in mind, why is React Native App Development so popular now? If you’re reading this article, it means you’ve probably heard something about React Native or are wondering if your organization should consider using it when developing your mobile app. In either case, we’ve got you covered! Let’s get started...

What is React Native?

React Native is a web app that uses the same programming language to build apps for both Android and iOS. It enables native application development with minimum code re-usage between platforms, eliminating the need to hire a separate team for every platform. This means you can write your app’s code once and then have it work on Android and iOS. This basically means that React Native app development is a kind of hybrid app development. 

The React Native app is implemented using a combination of JavaScript and native components. Therefore, it can be seen as an extension of the famous React web development framework.

Why is React Native so popular?

React Native is a framework for developing mobile apps. It allows developers to create apps for Android and iOS using a single programming language, JavaScript. This means that developers can write fewer lines of code, resulting in lower costs and less time spent building the app.

This also means that an app built using React Native is native and doesn’t look like a web app that has been ported to mobile. It’s fully integrated with the host operating system and can take advantage of the device’s hardware and software features, including push notifications and in-app purchases.

Also Read: How To Build An MVP With React Native: The Best Ways To Help Startups

Since React Native apps are built with JavaScript, their code is easily shared between platforms. This means that development teams only need to create an app once, regardless of which operating system it will be used on. This is a huge advantage, as it means that startups can reduce the cost of creating and maintaining their app.

3 Key Benefits of React Native for Startups

Reduced App Development Time: Since React Native is a single codebase app, it can take less time to create it for Android and iOS. This means that developers can create apps for users and increase their reach quicker and more cheaply.

Reduced Cost and Risk: As we mentioned earlier, React Native is a single codebase app, it can also be used to create a single app for multiple features and functions. This means you can reuse code across platforms, unlike a native app, where you must build a separate app for Android and iOS. This will reduce the cost of building and maintaining the app, as the same code will be used, regardless of the platform.

Higher User Engagement: React Native is a single codebase app. It can also create a single app with multiple features and functions. This means you can reuse code across platforms, unlike a native app, where you must build a separate app for Android and iOS. This will reduce the cost of building and maintaining the app, as the same code will be used, regardless of the platform.

How to make the most of React Native for your startup?

Now that we know what React Native is and why it is so famous for startups, let's talk about how you can make the most of it for your business. You should keep several things in mind if you want to use the React Native framework for your startup.

First, you must ensure that your company hires the right developers. You should be looking for an experienced team with a background in mobile app development. You must also choose the right mobile app development company for your project.

Second, you must also ensure you choose the right tools for the job. Your tools will depend on what kind of app you want to create.

Also Read: Why Should Start-Up Businesses Go For React Native Mobile App Development?

Third, you will need to ensure that you have a clear goal and vision for your app. What do you want your app to do? What do you want your users to get out of it? These are essential questions that you should consider when creating your app.

Final Words: Should your startup use React Native?

If your startup is looking to create a new app or if you want to update an existing app, it’s a good idea to consider React Native. React Native is a single codebase app, and it can take less time to create it for Android and iOS. This means that developers can create apps for users and increase their reach quicker and more cheaply.

It can also increase user engagement, as it can be used to create a single app for multiple features and functions. This means you can reuse code across platforms, unlike a native app, where you must build a separate app for Android and iOS.

Here is all the data you would like before jumping on this adventurous ride of mobile app development.

In this article, you may study all of the aspects of app development. We'll be answering some important questions that are essential to think about before investing in an app venture.

Native apps: These are specific to every platform – iOS or Android. The developer must write code that supports the platform getting used. The code language differs for iOS and Android. iOS uses Swift, while Android uses the Java coding language.

Hybrid apps: because the name suggests, hybrid apps are a mixture of both platforms, iOS, and Android. There's now web support for hybrid apps making them even more accessible. Common options for development languages under this category are React Native and Flutter. The foremost important advantage Hybrid has over Native, is that the identical codebase will be accustomed to run on multiple platforms which reduces the general cost and time. You simply should write code once!

Wireframing

Wireframes are the backbone of any project. Wireframes function as a middle ground between low-fidelity sketches and first interactive prototypes. The particular process of wireframing for mobile varies drastically. the higher the clarity of wireframes, the higher the code, and ultimately, the higher the app is going to be.

User Access Management for Mobile App Development

User Access Management, also referred to as identity and access management, is the administration giving individual users within the system access to the tools they have at the proper time. For businesses, this usually includes access to external applications, permissions, and security requirements.

Features

Once you've got your basic ideas, layout, and combination the way you wish them, you would like to begin puzzling over what the customer wants. If you don’t meet the customers’ needs, a competitor might, and as a result, you may lose significant business. There are some features, which are nice to own and a few which are must-haves, but many will make your app stand out. Things to contemplate include: Email Notification, Push notification, Cloud computing, Real-time tracking, and more. The list is endless. So, decide and choose what features are right for your supported budget and requirements.

Third-Party Plugins

Depending on the features you opt for, the third-party plugins are going to be the subsequent requirement. The more plugins, the higher the value. Third-party plugins are software or libraries which help your feature work. Suppose you wish a tracking system just in case of getting the real-time feedback you would like to integrate libraries like Pusher or Pubnub. All the third-party plugins usually have pricing plans supported by users which you'll review.

Contact Bhive Technologies Mobile Application Development in Chennai & Your mobile app development process is prepared to begin! 

Server and Network Maintenance

Most apps nowadays run their backends on cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure, which (depending on the size required) can cost pennies or thousands of dollars monthly. Additionally, many third-party services (such as payment systems) that an app might use, operate under a SaaS model which needs subscription costs. As an app gains popularity, its needs in both these areas are likely to grow which successively racks up the prices of its upkeep. Once an app has been battle-tested within the planet with real users, bugs are guaranteed to show up and can be addressed continually.

Making a Profit

Mobile apps are critical for any business. Not only for smooth business operations and functioning but also as a separate channel for revenue generation. As a mobile app development company here at ITH, one of the foremost commonly asked questions that we hear is — how do apps make money?

Contact Bhive Technologies Mobile Development Company in Chennai & Your mobile app development process is prepared to begin! 

Overall Cost of Mobile App Development

The cost of creating a mobile app is most frequently supported by the number of hours the project may take. The harder the functionality, the longer it'll desire to implement. Let me divide these into three categories:

Average: These apps include some basic functionality, don’t require integration with any third-party APIs, and will not need a backend infrastructure. Features of such applications may include standard UI components, a feed list, simple filters, and map markers. Developing an easy app like this usually takes about 250–400 hours.

Medium: These apps may include custom UI features, real-time chat, payment functionality, tablet and handset adaptation, integration with APIs, and an easy backend server. It takes around 1,000 hours to create such an app.

Complex: Highly complex apps include advanced functionality like audio/video processing, real-time synchronization, custom animations, integrations with third-party services, complex backends with several sorts of database relationships, and more. The timeframe for construction apps is 2,400+ hours. A full-fledged social media application, dating app, data collection, or video streaming apps may all be in this category.

Conclusion:

Contact Bhive Technologies iOS App Development Company in Chennai & Your mobile app development process is prepared to begin! If you have got any questions, or want to run your idea past a panel of experts, we’re here to talk!

Mobile app development is the creation of software that is intended to run on mobile devices and is optimized to take advantage of the unique features and hardware of those products.

The types of mobile apps that developers create include native apps, hybrid apps, and HTML5 apps.

The mobile app development business is expected to grow to nearly $ 600 billion by 2020.

Status 200 is a well-known mobile application development company in Pakistan.

How to develop a mobile app

There are two ways to think about modern mobile app development, as well as how to categorize mobile devices into two common categories. Native development and cross-platform development.

Native development

This method of developing mobile apps describes how to build apps for a particular mobile operating system using specialized tools.

To develop apps for iOS, you need to code in either Objective-C or Swift with XCode, an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) dedicated to MacOS.

Apps for Android devices are developed in Java using the Android SDK (Software Development Kit), which runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

There are several reasons to develop a native mobile app for each mobile OS, including speed, security, and reliability. The big drawback is that when developing both iOS and Android apps, you basically have to create the whole thing twice.

Cross-platform development

This type of development uses the framework to build the app once and then create both iOS and Android versions. Here is a list of some of the most popular frameworks.

ion

Ionic is an open-source framework used to develop mobile applications. It provides a variety of tools and services for building mobile UIs with a native look and feel. A native wrapper is required to run the Ionic framework on mobile devices.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova, officially known as PhoneGap, is a mobile development framework originally created by Nitobe. Currently owned by Adobe Systems. With this framework, developers don't need to know Java or Swift, they only need to know basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

React native

React Native is Facebook's cross-platform mobile app development framework. Like React, React Native allows developers to build mobile apps using JSX and JavaScript derivatives. Although the learning curve is steeper than other frameworks like Apache Cordova, React Native allows developers to take advantage of the more native features of devices such as cameras without additional plugins.

Mobile operating system

iOS (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV)

iOS is a mobile operating system developed and distributed by Apple Inc. Originally released with the iPhone in 2007, it now works with many other devices such as the iPod Touch, iPad, and Apple TV.

iOS shares the same roots as the macOS operating system used on modern Apple computers.

Android

Android is an open-source Linux-based mobile operating system. Android was developed by the Open Handset Alliance, led by Google and featuring contributions from many other companies.

Having a great idea is just the first step in the creation of a successful mobile app. Afterward, checking its validity in the real world is the key to getting started. And building an MVP or Minimum Viable Product can help you test your idea, accelerate time to market & keep the development cost under budget.

If you have reached here, you might be already aware of all the benefits of building an MVP. But for those who are new to this world, it’s important to first understand the importance of getting started with an MVP instead of the full-fledged product.

Importance of Building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

As mentioned above, MVP development is all about validating the idea, as it confirms the interest of users in your product. The main purpose is to test the hypothesis by reducing errors.

In other words, building a minimum viable product can help you bridge the gap between “what the business is offering to customers and what they actually need.” Moreover, you can significantly reduce the overall cost of development.

How? Well, to build a mobile app you need a team of full-time dedicated developers. Whereas, if you want to build an MVP then hiring developers on a temporary basis would also work. Here, temporary developers mean hiring freelancers or remote developers from an agency.

Now, with the reduced overhead cost, you can build your mobile app with basic features & launch the prototype while saving cost, efforts & time in the hiring process of full-time employees.

For better clarity, let’s list down all the benefits of building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product);

1. Testing the App Concept

Like mentioned earlier, checking the validity of your idea is the prime purpose. Of course, you would not like to invest in an idea that might lead you towards failure. Moreover, while testing the idea you can collect feedback from the early users, make adjustments, and consider new features to satisfy the end-users.

2. Faster Development

This is one of the best advantages. By opting to build an MVP, you can reduce the time to market and launch your mobile app with basic features. The average time-span for building an MVP would be about one or two months, getting you ahead of your competitors, that will launch their full-fledged app after six months.

3. Reduced Development Cost

Are you a startup? If yes, building an MVP becomes even more relevant for you. Because your app is going to take fewer hours to launch, you will pay a lesser amount to the developers. Thus, you can test the waters without spending thousands of dollars.

4. Outreaching Investors

Considering that you are seeking investment for your idea, you may need to present a working prototype. That’s where MVP development becomes handy. Just take a quick look at the above benefits, and you will agree that presenting a prototype to investors is easier.

Getting Started with an MVP

It is always recommended to start with the basic and limited features, especially for startups. But before that, you should conduct market research to find out the features that are must and would be required to fulfill the requirements of the end-users.

Related – 7 Secrets to Make Users Go Crazy for your Mobile App

Additionally, it will give you an opportunity to start the promotion of your app earlier. As a result, you can easily reach out to your target audience. And as soon as you will get a clear picture of the users’ preferences, you can improvise the end product accordingly.

Besides this, a tangible outcome can help you gain the attention of potential investors.

Suggested Frameworks for Building MVP

The mobile app development industry is going through a technological transformation. For building a prototype, experts always recommend choosing a cross-platform framework. Top contenders on the list are React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin.

But most entrepreneurs choose between React Native and Flutter. Of course, both of them are the best, but in terms of design and flexibility, Flutter wins the competition.

For more insights, you can check out this React Native vs Flutter comparison.

Evolving Technology with Flutter App Development

With plenty of mobile app frameworks trending in the market, it is quintessential to select the one that best fits the company’s objectives. Flutter is one such platform that is worth investing in and promises to deliver superior-quality apps for both iOS and Android.

Flutter is creating headlines within the mobile app development industry. The top-notch quality and effectiveness are evident by the stable release of Flutter 1.2.2. Furthermore, adoption by big giants like Alibaba, Google Ads, Birch Finance, App Tree, etc, adds up more support for the use of this framework.

What Makes Flutter an Ideal Choice for MVP Development?

Flutter is basically an open-source software development kit that is in the market since 2015. And, it remained in the beta stage before the official launch in December 2018. But has now evolved as a mature framework and best choice for the development of hybrid mobile apps.

Over time, Flutter has become popular for enhanced features, bug fixes, and widgets. Being open-source, it complements MVP development whether it is for startups or established firms. As you are fully aware of Flutter, let’s discuss the benefits of using Flutter for Building MVP;

1. Development of a Cost-Efficient Mobile App

From the very beginning, cost limitations have been the major hindrances for businesses that wish to enter into the mobility space. While developing native apps, you may end up spending more on hiring two teams of mobile app developers (iOS and Android).

Flutter can facilitate the development of a budget-friendly MVP in different ways.

Flutter comes as a solution, supporting the development of mobile apps compatible with iOS and Android with a single code base. Also, the availability of widgets makes it easy for flutter app developers to seamlessly work on the UI aspect of the application.

Besides this, Flutter gives you the opportunity to make valuable integrations. Developers can export the sketch design directly into the pixel-perfect codes. Despite making changes in the visuals, developers can prioritize delivering the value.

2. Expressive and Flexible User-interface

Flutter carries what Google is popular for; the expressive and flexible UIs to elevate the customer’s experience. For e.g, Flutter owns the built-in widgets for the material design, Cupertino and default animations for normal scrolling, rich motion APIs, etc.

3. Best Native Performance

Indeed, if you have a large budget to spend on mobile apps, you can go ahead and hire Android app developers and iPhone app developers, to build native applications.

But if you are on a budget and want to develop hybrid apps, most of the frameworks will compromise with the performance, thereby undermining the app’s user experience.

Whereas apps built with Flutter are known for their performance. The apps run via natively compiled code without the interference by interpreters, therefore, start quickly to maintain a constant 60fps speed. In short, if you plan to develop the MVP of your application using Flutter, it will have the ability to provide native experience to the users.

4. Expedited App Development Process

App development using Flutter provides a quick turnaround time. This is because the SDK comes packed with the hot reload functionality making it possible for the developers to review the app changes in real-time. This makes the complete app development process fast and easy.

5. Straightforward Integration with Firebase

There is no need to have a separate backend for developing a simple MVP. Firebase offers out-of-box support for plenty of services like cloud storage, cloud functions, real-time databases, hosting, authentication, etc.

Basically, the Firebase Remote Config assists you in making changes in the app without long waits for the play store to deploy the same.

The support becomes serverless, redundant, and scalable. This simply means that there is no need to spend a lot of time and resources on the development of the backend. It can be directly combined with a tool for automating the development and release process like Fastlane, facilitating continuous delivery.

6. Supports Plenty of IDEs

When you hire Flutter developers, they can choose a number of Integrated Development Environment supported by this software development kit. Plus, Flutter Live uses Visual Code, which is light-weighted and much faster, having many features available in the Android Studio and IntelliJ, thus, eliminating the need to start over.

7. React Inspired Modern Framework

React is basically a JavaScript library. Whereas Flutter has a modern framework inspired by React, thus, allowing developers to use the complete framework or parts as per the requirement.

8. Built In-app Campaigns

After the app launch, marketing is the first concern for most entrepreneurs. Well, Flutter has found a solution to this problem as well. It allows you to promote the app on different platforms inclusive of Google Play, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, and continuously growing on the Google Display Network.

Moreover, it offers $75 credit on the spend of $25 on different campaigns.

9. Continuous Growth and Improvement

Flutter gives a dynamic app development setup. It comprises a dedicated widget engine and UI components resembling the native platforms. The widgets are also flexible when it comes to customization and are aesthetically designed.

10. Flutter has an Active Community

The super-active Flutter community is always active for the contributors. The community has several platforms inclusive of Github for raising tickets, Meetup for the next event, or getting involved in Q/A conversations in Stack Overflow, Medium, Slack, YouTube, and different platforms.

Top Companies that Build MVP before Getting Popular

Undoubtedly, developing an MVP before launching the actual product has a long list of benefits. And there are many companies that gained overnight success by using MVP’s first approach. Here are a few companies that released MVP’s to achieve massive growth:

1. Dropbox

Dropbox, the most popular cloud-based storage platform, had to face financial challenges in its initial stages. They didn’t even release the physical product, rather created a short video that demoed their product’s first build.

Because the concept was unique and innovative, it turned out to be an overnight success. After the immediate release of the video, their beta sign-up list went from 5,000 to 75,000.

2. Instagram

The biggest photo and video sharing social media app, “Instagram” was launched when the market for editing software for images was saturated. Developing an MVP initially, making it a huge success.

In the beginning, when it was a simple photo-sharing platform having basic filters, it was only compatible with iOS. In a saturated market, the MVP worked wonders for the makers.

3. Airbnb

Airbnb has its own significance in the tourism industry. It started offering accommodations at a reasonable price to the travelers and tourists around the locality of their journey. The MVP had different images of the apartments and flats. With Flutter MVP, the main motive was to obtain feedback from the customers and then work on the end product accordingly.

Closing Thoughts

Building exceptional and high-performance mobile apps require a decent amount of support from SDKs like Flutter. Well, Flutter has the ability to make a lot of difference as it can simplify the complete process of mobile app development without compromising the appeal and quality of the app.

It provides native app performance, making it more lucrative to the initial adopters and investors. Also, it beautifully fits into the particular needs of the Flutter app developers. However, there has been no skepticism regarding the Flutter’s efficacy on the outstanding interface, flexible APIs as well as excellent performance.

So, what is keeping you from picking up this platform for your MVP development? Drop your requirements at [email protected] and harness the lucrative power of Flutter to create an extraordinary Minimum Viable Solution as the end product.

Ready to take off with your app idea? Hire developers from Your Team in India and start working on your dream project.

This study is adapted from my presentation npm and the Future of JavaScript. No data is perfect; if you have questions about ours you can read about the methodology used to gather this data.

npm has over 10 million users who download well over 30 billion packages every month. On an average Tuesday—npm’s busiest day—users download more than 1.3 billion packages of open source JavaScript. This gives us a lot of information about what JavaScript users are up to. On top of that data, in partnership with the Node.js Foundation and the JS Foundation we survey of over 16,000 developers to ask what they’re up to.

From these two sources, we’ve uncovered some insights about the makeup of the npm community, as well as information about what the community considers to be best practices. This will help you make your technical choices in 2019.

JavaScript is the world’s most popular programming language

It’s no news to anyone that JavaScript is incredibly popular these days. Stack Overflow’s 2018 developer survey has JavaScript as the most popular programming language (with fellow web languages HTML and CSS at the #2 and #3 spots). GitHub’s most recent Octoverse infographic ranks languages by the number of pull requests received, and JavaScript is the top there, too.

The total number of JavaScript developers is hard to estimate. Slashdata’s 2018 survey suggests there were 9.7M by the end of 2017 and growing quickly, meaning there are well over 10M at this point. npm’s own estimates suggest there are over 10M npm users, and we see similarly rapid growth. There are JavaScript developers who do not yet use npm, but as a percentage of all JavaScript developers they are quite small, possibly fewer than 10%.

The npm Registry contributes to the popularity of JavaScript

Without question, JavaScript’s popularity is driven by its ubiquity as the only language directly usable for developing web applications. However, a fascinating paper by Leo Meyerovich and Ariel Rabkin at Berkeley studied the factors contributing to programming language adoption and found that, overall, the availability of open-source libraries relevant to the task at hand was the most important factor in selecting a programming language.

Our own survey data support the conclusions of this study. The most common reason respondents gave for choosing JavaScript was the number of libraries available.

With over 836,000 libraries currently available, npm is the largest single collection of open-source libraries in the world, by a significant margin—although JavaScript’s tendency towards smaller libraries means this comparison isn’t entirely apples-to-apples. Regardless, this enormous reservoir of open source code means that the popularity of JavaScript and npm works both ways: the language gains popularity because of the Registry, and vice versa.

npm is used to build every kind of application

We asked users where the JavaScript they write is used. An overwhelming 93% of respondents said that they write code for the web, with a still-substantial 70% saying they write JavaScript that runs on servers, i.e., Node.js. However, many other application areas including Internet of Things (IoT), desktop applications, native mobile applications, and others saw substantial numbers of users, too.

This is a significant change for those of us who work at npm, Inc. and maintain the npm command-line tool. npm was invented to serve the needs of server-side app developers, and the needs of web developers are different. Becoming a majority-web platform has meant changing our priorities, which has ledto new features like package locking by default.

npm is essential to web development

When npm, Inc. started in 2014, a tree of a few dozen JavaScript packages was typical. These days, the average modern web application has over 1000 modules, and trees of over 2000 modules are not uncommon. In fact, 97% of the code in a modern web application comes from npm. An individual developer is responsible only for the final 3% that makes their application unique and useful.

This is a huge success story for code reuse, for the strength of the npm community, and for open source in general. The time saved by not re-inventing the code in thousands of modules is saving millions of developers hundreds of millions of coding-hours.

npm has focused on security in 2018

To a great many developers, npm has simply become the way you build a website. This is a responsibility we take seriously. In our survey, 77% of developers said they were concerned about the quality and security of the open source libraries they used, and a worrying 52% said the tools currently available were inadequate. We went into more depth on these results in our post Attitudes to Security in the JavaScript community earlier this year.

In April, we announced that we acquired ^Lift Security and their product, the Node Security Platform. Today, the NSP is integrated directly into npm, and every install of npm includes security audits that notify users if they are installing insecure modules. We also furnish tools to easily correct these vulnerabilities by automatically installing secure versions of their modules. In addition, users of npm Enterprise and paid npm Organizations users receive notifications of embargoed vulnerabilities not yet publicly disclosed.

The demographics of npm users

The basic demographics of our survey respondents are covered in our methodology post, but there are several important facts worth highlighting:

1. We are mostly new. 25% have been using JavaScript for less than 2 years, and 51% have been using npm for less than 2 years. This is a side effect of the community doubling in size in that time!

2. We are mostly self-taught. 69% of npm users mostly taught themselves JavaScript, with the next highest being 22% who learned on the job.

We don’t just write JavaScript. People who use npm aren’t always strictly JavaScript developers—30% each report writing Java, PHP, and Python, and smaller numbers of lots of other languages.

We don’t just work at “tech” companies. 55% of npm users describe themselves as working at a company that wouldn’t be considered a “tech” company.

There are also some ways that npm users don’t differ from the general population of software developers, which is itself interesting. For example, npm users work at every size of company, in roughly the same proportion as those companies exist. JavaScript isn’t a “big company” or a “small company” tech. npm users also are evenly distributed across every industry, as well as other demographics such as age and education level.

Everybody would like less tooling

JavaScript in 2018 is somewhat notorious for requiring a lot of tooling to get going, which is quite a reversal from the situation in 2014, when Node.js was considered an “everything included” framework. Today, most developers wouldn’t consider Node to be a framework at all. True to that, all of our survey respondents would like to see less tooling, less configuration required to get started, and better documentation of the tools that do exist. But what tools?

We went in-depth into the popularity of JavaScript frameworks in our “State of JavaScript Frameworks” series (part 1, part 2, part 3) earlier this year. We won’t reiterate all the findings of that analysis, but rather dive into a few updates of what’s changed in the 9 months since then.

As a reminder, it’s important to understand the “share of registry” metric we are using here: a “flat” graph in this case means strong growth, just not growth relative to the growth of the registry, which is always growing quickly.

React’s growth has slowed

React continues to dominate the web scene. Over 60% of npm’s survey respondents say they are using React, and it has grown further since then. However, that growth in 2018 has been slower than in 2017.

Angular downloads have stayed flat

The two major flavors of Angular combined have stayed roughly flat in terms of market share.

Ember’s popularity has rebounded

In a very unusual phenomenon, Ember’s popularity, which appeared to be declining, has continued a strong rebound. By September, more than twice as many developers were using Ember as at the beginning of the year. We’re going to keep a close eye on this story, but we think Ember’s resurgence is part of the explanation for the slowdown in React.

Vue’s strong growth has continued

Vue was already growing quickly and that continued in 2018. Many Vue users report that they picked it over React because in their opinion it’s easier to get started while maintaining extensibility. Our current theory is that React’s growth has been slowed by many newer users picking Vue.

GraphQL continues hyper-growth

GraphQL, tracked by its most popular client library Apollo, continues to explode in popularity. We think it’s going to be a technical force to reckon with in 2019.

Transpilers rule, led by Babel—and a surprise: TypeScript

Babel is familiar to any React user as the tool used to transpile React’s next-generation JavaScript into the currently-supported JavaScript standards. In line with React’s 60% market share, 65% of npm users report using Babel. (It also has uses outside of the React ecosystem.)

Something of a surprise, however, was TypeScript, with 46% of survey respondents reporting they use Microsoft’s the type-checked JavaScript variant. This is major adoption for a tool of this kind and might signal a sea change in how developers write JavaScript. We are definitely going to be asking more questions about TypeScript usage in the next version of our survey.

npm’s predictions for 2019

It’s always difficult to make predictions about an ecosystem as huge, varied, and fast-changing as JavaScript, but our data has led us to make a few predictions for 2019 that we think we can commit to.

1. You will abandon one of your current tools. Frameworks and tools don’t last in JavaScript. The average framework has a phase of peak popularity of 3–5 years, followed by years of slow decline as people maintain legacy applications but move to newer frameworks for new work. Be prepared to learn new frameworks, and don’t hold on to your current tools too tightly.

2. Despite a slowdown in growth, React will be the dominant framework in 2019. 60% market share for a web framework is unheard-of, and that’s partly because React isn’t a full framework, just part of one. This allows it to flexibly cover more use-cases. But for building a web app in 2019, more people will use React than anything else, and that will result in a big advantage in terms of tutorials, advice, and bug fixes.

3. You’ll need to learn GraphQL. It might be too early to put GraphQL into production, especially if your API is already done, but 2019 is the year you should get your mind around the concepts of GraphQL. There’s a good chance you’ll be using them in new projects later in the year and in 2020.

4. Somebody on your team will bring in TypeScript. 46% adoption implies that TypeScript is more than just a tool for enthusiasts. Real people are getting real value out of the extra safety provided by type-checking. Especially if you’re a member of a larger team, consider adopting TypeScript into your 2019 projects.

Stay tuned