React Native: 5.43% of apps (4.18% of installs)
Flutter: 4.22% of apps (1.39% of installs)
It's clear from the ratio of apps to installs that React Native is used by apps that are on average 3x more popular, but that isn't really a sign that the framework is less viable, just that more of the most popular apps are were written using something else - and I'd speculate that in many cases those apps predated Flutter.
I actually find it more interesting that the number of apps written with Flutter compared to React Native is fairly similar. To me, that suggests that Flutter is gaining ground rapidly, because that very much wasn't the case when I first starting using Flutter on my hobby project a few years back.
In any case, your 25% target seems unrealistic for any framework [1]. Unless your takeaway is also that React Native is not a viable target until it too hits 25%.
[1] I'm discounting Kotlin from these stats as it's not a framework [2], and similarly I don't understand why they counted the Android components as a framework.
[2] Actually, I'm surprised Kotlin is this way down in the charts... If native code is now more popular than Kotlin, that could cause compatibility issues now some phone manufacturers are starting to experiment with RISC-V instead of Arm.
> I can imagine many big / popular apps switch to native once they have the resources to do so but start off with cross-platform.
Not really. Startups looking to keep costs as low as possible tell themselves this and there’s a lot of advice out there from people who will tell you the same, but it’s very rare. If you are tempted to go with the cheap option and plan on switching once you have the budget, make your peace with the fact you will probably be stuck with the cheap option forever.
I would be curious to know how many apps with a 1M+ downloads use these frameworks.