The title of the post is a little misleading, in that all versions of Quark together make up the top choice, whereas the current version of Quark is being beaten by InDesign.

Also, how did Pagemaker go up in usage?!

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I think this is a tough situation, as I find myself in a similar one. Big companies like magazine companies have been using Quark for years, as it has been the industry standard. All of their archives and templates are in Quark. Although we as individuals and small design firms realize the superiority of InDesign, it is impossible for larger companies to just drop everything ’Quark’ and change to a new format.

These are interesting statistics though. I wonder what Quark 7 will do to this.

The title of the post is a little misleading, in that all versions of Quark together make up the top choice, whereas the current version of Quark is being beaten by InDesign.

But your analysis also suffers from the same problem, since it is comparing to all versions of InDesign (i.e., 1, 1.5, 2, CS and CS2).

What’s more interesting is the 1% gain of Pagemaker, and the 3% gain of Other.

The Pagemaker growth is probably one of those ’margin of error’ problems. Come to think about it, the whole 6% is probably in the margin of error, one way or another.

My guess is that the survey size is very small, 30 or so magazine publishers, so the smaller numbers may be just 1 or 2 companies. Nick do you have any more info on the survey?

Sorry Si, that’s all I have.

But your analysis also suffers from the same problem, since it is comparing to all versions of InDesign (i.e., 1, 1.5, 2, CS and CS2).

I realize this, but for some reason the survey didn’t originally include data for the different versions of InDesign.

However, I suspect that most users who have switched to InDesign (or have always only used it) would have bought it as part of the CS package, either 1 or 2. It’s hard to believe that a large amount of people would still be using InDesign 1 or 2 successfully.

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But where’s “Ready,Set,Go!”?

And don’t forget that this is Canada, so around 50% of all magazine layout is still done with x-acto and a waxer.*

*I’m allowed to take the piss, ’cause I’m a Canuck.

>done with x-acto and a waxer.*

Is it true that if you heat the wrong type of wax it attracts polar bears - with disastrous results?

Yeah, you want to stay away from the fish-based waxes.

Until last September we were using word perfect 5.0... guess that puts us in the other!
K.

It’s funny how one’s perspective might change the headline. I guess Nick’s “Quark still No. 1 for Canadian magazines” makes sense if your default assumption was that InDesign has dethroned Quark in the installed base. Since that wasn’t my assumption, wearing my Adobe hat I was heartened rather than dismayed by the stats.

2003: QXP 84%, InD 11%
2006: QXP 53%, InD 38%

So QuarkXPress has lost over a third of their market share (of the installed base), while InDesign has gone up by 3.5x.

Looking deeper at the numbers, of the 46% of the market that was on QXP 4 and 5, and moved, 15/46 went to newer versions of Quark, and 27/46 went to InDesign, meaning that of Canadian magazines implementing newer DTP software in those three years, over 60% moved from Quark to InDesign rather than upgrading QuarkXPress.

Regards,

T

Oops, that’s actually more like 59% for that last stat.

Can help but quote... “96% of all statistics are made up on the spot” ;-)

if your default assumption was that InDesign has dethroned Quark in the installed base.

My assumption was that Quark is still much in use, while InDesign is coming on strong, although I didn’t have figures to confirm which was ahead. So I thought it would be interesting to post this data.

As a corollary, older operating systems are still much in use as well. At a presentation of Tiger and CS2, at the Toronto Type Club last Fall, the audience was asked which Apple OS they were using, and there was a split between the various OS X beasts, and pre-OS X.

As a magazine AD at a major Canadian publication, I think it’ll be interesting to see these survey results in 2007.

We switched to InDesign about two years ago, but many of our sister publications have continued with Quark. The reason? InDesign’s hardware requirements. Moving 200+ staff from OS9 iMacs running Quark 4 to OSX capable hardware has proven to be a multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment.

Still, over the past two years, computers have been upgraded piecemeal, and now any publication that has the means has moved to InDesign. I think the plan is to have all 15 of our magazines over to InDesign by the end of the 2006 calendar year.

I’m not sure if anyone’s reading these stats as a lack of willingness to move to InDesign — it’s quite the opposite. Anyone here who’s not using InDesign is chomping at the bit to rid themselves of Quark.

Thomas is right on the money.

Given that so much of Quark’s market share is associated with older hardware, it will be interesting to see how Quark 7 fares vs InDesign on OS X.

the other is people who design in illustrator. har

43% of all statistics are worthless.

These stats are pretty meaningless without knowing how many magazines responded in each case and whether they were the same for each survey.
Tim

Just in case you’d be interested, the same Design Edge magazine has a Q & A about this same topic here online.

It will be more interesting to see InDesign CS3.... But Thomas can’t say a word, I guess.

Photoshop CS3 - releasing two versions; feature an InDesign-like interface; features like Painter ?

Illustrator CS3 - feature video setups like Photoshop ?

And the Top Secret: InDesign CS3

Yes, I know lots about the next version of InDesign, and no, I can’t say anything.

I got the original magazine article, and it was quite interesting. Their headline for the software part of the survey results? “Adobe, Microsoft, Quark are the 3 Kings.”

The survey had 67 responses from production managers responsible for 171 magazines altogether. Statistics Canada says there are 2383 magazines published in Canada, so that’s about 7% of the total magazines. If it were a ransome sample, that would be enough to be pretty representative, but of course it’s not. Hard to say just how representative it is.

Some of the other stats from the same survey were interesting. For example...

2003: 10% on OS X, 48% more planned to adopt within 12 months.
2006: 82% on OS X, 11% more plan to adopt within 12 months.

Ad files submission:

2003: 42% app file, 6% “Wacko & other,” 30% PDF (28% X-1a, 2% regular), 11% PostScript/EPS, 8% TIFF-IT, 2% film

2006: 17% app file, 19% “Wacko & other,” 40% PDF (18% X-1a, 22% regular), 14% PostScript/EPS, 7% TIFF-IT, 3% film

“Wacko & other” is a category that includes taking PowerPoint, Word and other odd (for publishing) file formats. I was surprised to see the growth there, but I guess it means that people are being more responsive to customer demands. Interesting to see the 25% decrease in app file usage but only a 10% increase in PDF.

Proofing takes many forms, but the single most common approach? None, at 23% (up from 18%).

Cheers,

T

>If it were a ransome sample,

Freudian slip? Who paid for the results? ;-)

>Proofing takes many forms

Glad to see you adopted the popular approach. ;-)

Now, I can understand the s instead of a d, as they’re next to each other on the keyboard. But where did that final e come from?

Cheers,

T

I think the fullness of the subject matter is that Quark 3.xx-6.5xx has soooo many more pages than any competititon combined, that by saying “well now, my pagelayout program has x% of the market…” blah blah blah. I like IDcs2, but to me, Quark is easier to navigate with its box implementation. Misleading too, is the CS concept. If I buy Quark, I’m going to use it, if I buy CS2, i may only use three, and choose to use Quark and Dreamweaver. Adobe, clever marketing folks they are, do not tell us how many are using IDCS2.

I have worked in several types (digital, label and presently offset) of print shops in the last 8 years and ID has made small inroads, but really and sadly Pagemaker has a larger page and user base, and combined they lag behind Quark by miles I think Adobe was so optimistic about dethroning Quark 7 years ago that they must be pulling their hair out and only getting such a small return. 7 years which is interesting, because I think that is how long Quark 3.xx was out and the industry learned everthing about the program and that gives Quark a mighty lead.

Sincerely,
Rodrigue Planck

The Truth shall set you free

Huh? Did you not read this thread? The survey was neither done nor sponsored by Adobe. I for one wish we had the breakdown of specific versions of InDesign.

Also, InDesign has been shipping for more like five and a half years, not seven. Version 1.0 shipped August 16th of 2000.

BTW, Adobe never expected to overtake QuarkXPress overnight. There’s been a lot of hype to that effect - but from the media, not Adobe.

I for one am looking forward to version 7 of QuarkXPress. Real competition is good for end users.

Cheers,

T

> Misleading too, is the CS concept.

Why is that?