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.

* @param {object} context
   */
  _updateDOMChildren: function(lastProps, nextProps, transaction, context) {
    var lastContent =
      CONTENT_TYPES[typeof lastProps.children] ? lastProps.children : null;
    var nextContent =
      CONTENT_TYPES[typeof nextProps.children] ? nextProps.children : null;
    var lastHtml =
      lastProps.dangerouslySetInnerHTML &&
      lastProps.dangerouslySetInnerHTML.__html;
    var nextHtml =
      nextProps.dangerouslySetInnerHTML &&
      nextProps.dangerouslySetInnerHTML.__html;
    
    var lastChildren = lastContent != null ? null : lastProps.children;
    var nextChildren = nextContent != null ? null : nextProps.children;
    
    
    var lastHasContentOrHtml = lastContent != null || lastHtml != null;
    var nextHasContentOrHtml = nextContent != null || nextHtml != null;
    if (lastChildren != null && nextChildren == null) {
      this.updateChildren(null, transaction, context);
    } else if (lastHasContentOrHtml && !nextHasContentOrHtml) {
      this.updateTextContent('');
      if (__DEV__) {
        ReactInstrumentation.debugTool.onSetChildren(this._debugID, []);
      }
    }
    if (nextContent != null) {
      if (lastContent !== nextContent) {