I'm working on a mobile app for a local non-profit using React Native, Expo, and Supabase. The velocity and cost-efficiency have me questioning something we often take for granted: when did separate native codebases become the default instead of the exception?

The traditional iOS (Swift) + Android (Kotlin) approach means:

• Doubling your mobile engineering headcount or accepting 2x timelines
• Maintaining feature parity across two codebases (spoiler: it never stays in sync)
• Coordinating dual release cycles and separate QA processes
• Typical 6-9 month delivery cycles

React Native + Expo delivers:

• Single codebase serving iOS, Android, and web simultaneously
• 40-60% reduction in development time, based on projects I've led
• 50-75% all-in cost reduction for comparable functionality

To be clear: high-performance gaming, AR/VR experiences, or apps requiring day-one access to OS-level APIs still benefit from native development. But that's maybe 5% of the mobile apps being built today. For the other 95%, internal tools, customer portals, MVP validation, even production SaaS apps, cross-platform frameworks have matured into production-grade solutions.

Let's Talk

If your team is evaluating mobile strategy or looking to accelerate delivery without sacrificing quality, I'd welcome the conversation. After 15+ years leading distributed engineering teams and optimizing for both speed and reliability, I've seen what works at scale.

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