As React Native matured in the past few years, the community developed improved solutions to common problems, and many older stop-gaps were rendered obsolete. Perhaps that's what you're seeing.
The only major competitor to React Native that I'm aware of is Flutter, but it has several drawbacks that make me hesitate to recommend it.
The jank issue has been fairly minimized with Impeller, so performance-wide, it's fairly on par with RN. The only 2 issues I seem to find are the core Flutter team leaving Google, and Flutter web being unstable (and honestly I just wish they stopped developing for web and focusing on mobile). Another issue is learning a new language, but Dart being strongly typed makes it much easier to work with than Javascript.
In either case, RN and Flutter should be used only for the MVP stage, and once you can, you have to immediately switch to building on native at the right time.
At least with RN, there are thousands of React devs out there.
Of course, most companies hiring mobile devs do it wrong. Flutter hasn't been around long enough the same way React has, so years of experience is a meaningless metric here.
But these people can easily switch jobs and it’s doubtful most are ok to hitch their wagon to Flutter - a nascent framework with basically no crossover to web development and a big company behind it, known for killing its toys on a whim.
Much easier to just go do RN elsewhere.
Flutter did not come from nowhere, Dart is heavily inspired by Javascript and the rendering model is close to React.
The issue will rather be that they won't want to work on it due to their career than the pure tech capabilities.
The iOS issue is a minimal issue with the new Impeller API (not sure if you're updated on that). There is still a bit of jank, but between putting out an MVP vs another month for a native app, I'd say go with Flutter for the MVP. Then switch to native if your app takes off.
nb: RN, or Flutter are still more competitive than Maui however.