Is Flutter the next big thing for cross-platform application development?

No! This is not the 100th article that will compare React Native VS Flutter 😄.
Today I just want to focus on this trending technology and subject, and talk about the benefits it can bring to mobile application development world.

On November 19th, SNCF France's national state-owned railway company, one of the most important in the public transport industry, annonced a big change with their applications : most of them will be merged and reunited in one application called SNCF Connect 👉🏾 https://archives.flutter-digest.com/editions/46
And in order to deliver it, rework and redesign what they already have they use Flutter 🤯
Passionate developers in France cannot wait the feedback from the technical teams, because this is the first time such a technology is used at this scale in France (millions users use SNCF applications everyday...)

During the last Flutter Engage keynote this year, we also learned that Ubuntu (one of linux distribution) is using Flutter to build the new Ubuntu installer software 👉🏾 https://ubuntu.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far

From the Flutter website we can see it is more and more adopted by big companies such as BMW, Alibaba, Toyota, Ebay or Tencent 👀 https://flutter.dev/showcase

So, is this the beginning of the end for other frameworks and libraries that do cross-platform development such as React Native, or native development such as Swift or Kotlin ?
Of course not! 😌

What is incredible in the IT world is that a new joiner can actually helps improve its competitors.
Take a look at SwiftUI for example, both SwiftUI and Flutter are declarative UI frameworks which allow you to develop composable components for your mobile application. They are so similar that a SwiftUI developer can switch to Flutter without being lost and vice versa. If you want to explore main similarities and differences between the two frameworks, you can take a look at this excellent article from Code Magic 👉🏾 https://blog.codemagic.io/flutter-vs-swift/

React Native, the main competitor of Flutter for cross-platform development is also improving constantly, learning from its strengths and weaknesses. Last example presented by William Candillon is Skia (graphic engine used by Flutter) can now be adopted in React Native too 🔥 https://youtu.be/AxLmUsJAH7c

From the last Stackoverflow Developer Survey https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-misc-tech-want we can also see that the interes in Flutter is booming. It is one of the top 3 most loved ❤️ and wanted 🎯 technology combined!

I can't wait to see the latest stats to check if the trend will grow or decrease, but in my opinion it will increase.

Now, how can you decide which framework to use? How to check if Flutter is well adapted to what you want to deliver?
This great article from BAM Tech wrote an excellent comparison between React Native and Flutter, they created their own decision tree to decide which framework to use 👉🏾 https://blog.bam.tech/developer-news/react-native-or-flutter-the-decision-tree
If you speak or understand french, you can also take a look at their speech at Flutter France conference that occured 2 months ago 👉🏾 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybl4GOAUR8&ab_channel=FlutterFrance (or activate the subtitles 😃)

To conclude, Flutter is not yet the champion without contest in its category. But it sure is a great competitor that is bringing positive changes to the community and the industry. The next years should decide if this technology will continue to grow or stabilize, if it will be adopted more and more or it will be just a temporary phase.

I personally bet on the growing side, not only because it is backed by Google, but because the developer community has done a fantastic job in few years. And because for me, when a technology is able to inspire other technologies or help them improve, this is the sign of a great success.