The next few months are critical in the desktop publishing showdown because Adobe is a revving Creative Suite update and Quark is preparing to launch Version 7.0.Selected U.S. customers of Quark Inc. received an unexpected piece of mail at the beginning of March: a postcard from the Denver-based company that directly compared QuarkXPress 6.5 with Adobe's InDesign—the first time in memory that Quark has deigned to publicly attack its main competitor.
This aggressive approach isn't what Quark's customers are used to, and the response from some of them was less than positive. In postings on QuarkVsInDesign.com, a Web site devoted to following the competition between the two products, one customer described the cards as "childish and immature ... like kids who stick their tongues out at others while hiding behind their mother, knowing that they'd lose in an actual, face-to-face battle."
Meanwhile, an anonymous Adobe employee said, "We didn't get anything done the day [we saw the Quark postcards]. We were all laughing so hard we couldn't focus. Quark is really, really hurting to be going for such a negative campaign with so little ammunition."
Quark 7.0 will address market erosion. Click here to read more.
But this more aggressive approach is part of the "New Quark" that's emerged over the past year, in direct response to the threat of Adobe InDesign. Thanks to the gradual improvement of InDesign as a serious publishing tool, there have been some major defections in the publishing world from Quark to Adobe.
One example of this is BBC Magazines, the print publishing arm of the U.K. television corporation, which switched last September from QuarkXPress to InDesign after a successful trial of the product lasting more than a year.
The company has bought about 350 licenses and has transitioned the majority of its 40 publications to InDesign. Julian Adams, publishing systems manager for BBC Worldwide, cited the integration between InDesign and other Adobe products—notably Photoshop and Illustrator—as one of the principle reasons for the decision.
Although many of Adobe's successes have been in the magazine publishing market, other areas have seen defections, too, with companies such as Ogilvy & Mather (advertising) and Landor Associates (brand consulting) standardizing on InDesign.
Next Page: A more aggressive Quark fights back.
Quark isn't taking this lying down and has begun to fight back with more aggressive marketing and an increased rate of technological improvement. Over the past year, the notoriously secretive company has begun to open up, both to its customers and to the rest of the world.
Gavin Drake, marketing director at Quark U.K., pointed to the company's increased number of employees devoted to field sales and support. "Overall, Quark has tripled its number of field staff and relaunched our QuarkAlliance program to enable output providers, training centers, XTensions developers and other partners to work more closely with us," he said.
Where is the DTP market headed? Click here to read more.
Quark's feistiness may already be paying off in some areas. Although neither Quark nor Adobe is prepared to release sales or market-share figures, Drake claimed that the upgrade to QuarkXPress 6 has been the most successful ever for the company, with "sales of both upgrades and full products extremely strong and increasing."
Quark also gained back some customer goodwill with the release of XPress 6.5, which not only added significant new features to the desktop publishing package but also was free for registered customers—a move that would have been unthinkable in the not-too-distant past.
The next few months are likely to be the most significant for both Adobe and Quark in their efforts to win over desktop publishing customers. Next week is likely to see the announcement of a new version of InDesign, as part of an update to the company's CS (Creative Suite) product line.
Although few details of InDesign CS 2.0—as the product is dubbed—have leaked, among the features rumored to be in the release are support for drag-and-drop text, the ability to turn off and on Photoshop layers and layer comps, and a new Word import filter that lets users map Word styles to InDesign styles.
Quark Publishing System 3.5 is coming to market. Click here to read more.
If QuarkXPress 6.5 managed to gain back both some technical ground and customer mindshare, then a new release of InDesign is likely to refocus attention on the Adobe product.
But it also will mean that once again the spotlight will fall on QuarkXPress 7, due later this year, and whether it will be improved enough to stem the apparent tide toward Adobe.
So far, Quark has been reluctant to talk about new features, although it revealed earlier this year that the product would have a rewritten type engine that introduces full support for both OpenType and Unicode. But it's likely that the company will give further peeks at the product before its release. With Adobe breathing down its neck, XPress 7 is likely to be a make-or-break release for Quark.
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