Nikolai Mavrenkov already created a good description of the problem on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36893449/textarea-placeholder-isnt-shown-in-ie-11-being-rendered-using-react

I just can confirm it breaks in IE11, but works in IE10 (and other browsers) with React v15.0.2.

}
  },
  /**
   * Reconciles the properties by detecting differences in property values and
   * updating the DOM as necessary. This function is probably the single most
   * critical path for performance optimization.
   *
   * TODO: Benchmark whether checking for changed values in memory actually
   *       improves performance (especially statically positioned elements).
   * TODO: Benchmark the effects of putting this at the top since 99% of props
   *       do not change for a given reconciliation.
   * TODO: Benchmark areas that can be improved with caching.
   *
   * @private
   * @param {object} lastProps
   * @param {object} nextProps
   * @param {?DOMElement} node
   */
  _updateDOMProperties: function(
    lastProps,
    nextProps,
    transaction,
    isCustomComponentTag
  ) {
    var propKey;
    var styleName;
    var styleUpdates;
    for (propKey in lastProps) {
      if (nextProps.hasOwnProperty(propKey) ||
         !lastProps.hasOwnProperty(propKey) ||