React Native has become one of the most popular UI frameworks for mobile development and continues to see widescale adoption. Over the past year, we have seen rapidly growing interest from companies looking to stream video in their mobile applications with the Bitmovin Player. This topic has also been trending in the Bitmovin developer Community for months, where community members have even shared their bridging code for the Bitmovin Player for other customers to use. With all this enthusiasm around this framework, we are excited to announce that we have launched an official open-source React Native wrapper for the Bitmovin Player.
For context, React Native, along with ReactJS, have changed how developers create mobile and web applications, and this latest release means that we now have official support for the pair. Both frameworks are the fastest growing for their use cases because they are easily customizable, allow engineers to deploy on many more devices than they otherwise would, and are JavaScript and TypeScript based. This means developers aren’t required to learn or have previous experience with native mobile platforms to launch an application and can even share code between their web and mobile applications.
Now, why is this important for developers?
Device fragmentation is a problem every video streaming service faces when trying to reach wider audiences. React Native’s cross-device compatibility means companies won’t require separate engineering teams for iOS and Android development, empowering smaller teams to support more devices. This enables devs to quickly deploy our industry-leading Player and provide the best viewing experience for users across mobile devices. If development teams use React Native, they can dramatically improve their time-to-value in terms of launch speed, development time, and associated costs. Additionally, research shows that using our Player further cuts down on the dev time required, helping you save over 600+ hours each year on maintenance-related updates for Android and iOS alone (the equivalent of 2 full-time developers!).
With the React Native wrapper bridging our iOS and Android SDKs, engineers can create applications for more than just mobile devices. Our Player SDKs can also be used for applications on tvOS, AndroidTV, and FireTV, giving React Native developers the option to reach audiences in their living rooms. Using React Native for iOS and Android in combination with ReactJS for web means customers playing video with our Player can use the Player SDKs and expand their service to a vast range of devices, using only JavaScript (or TypeScript).
What are the use cases and features that come with React Native support?
With the need to stream live or on-demand video content, many industries looking to add video streaming capabilities to their workflows now can. Dev teams for companies within eLearning, fitness, eCommerce, and other sectors that may not have extensive streaming knowledge can utilize our Player to fit their use cases. Already, our React Native wrapper contains support for DRM, subtitles, and closed captions, which are crucial for content protection and accessibility requirements. Devs will also be able to take advantage of the Player UI and comprehensive event system for all Player and Playback state changes. For the next update, we’re hoping to release support for client-side advertising to allow our clients to monetize their content however they wish.
Get involved!
As this is an open-source project, we have received and are actively accepting community pull requests, so please feel free to contribute by creating a branch in GitHub with any customizations. Our video experts will review your contribution and integrate it into the library. Also, let us know in our developer community what features we should work on next by creating a new topic in the forum.
Additionally, test out the Bitmovin Player and every feature we offer by signing up for our 30-day free trial. Trial users also get complete access to our other solutions, such as VOD and Live Encoding, Analytics, and Streams.
