Sayonara XPress
1 May 2005
Ever since the big fanfare introduction of InDesign J at MacWorld Tokyo 2001, Adobe has been waiting for the Japanese print market to see the light and switch from QuarkXPress, but there were problems. In addition to the logistical problems facing western users: how to migrate mature, stable, workflows to a major new layout application, Japanese users also had serious font problems (see previous report ‘The Second Wave of Japanese Desktop Publishing’).
| | Japanese pre-press is still using MacOS 9 and QuarkXPress 3.3. 2005 looks to be the year they finally start upgrading to MacOS X, but they won’t be upgrading Quark, instead they will migrate to InDesign. |
This past December we had a chance to survey the Japanese print market and talk with major players. We found the majority of pre-press production is still centered in MacOS 9 and ‘Classic’ applications (Illustrator 8 and QuarkXPress 3.x). This is not news. What is news is that Japanese printers are finally taking the MacOS X plunge and will do so in a big way this year. When they do so they will also be moving to InDesign. The implications for Quark are serious, their Japanese market share could shrink quickly in the next 2–3 years.
Input
Joel Breckinridge
e:jbreckinridge@mac.com
Related sites
Quark
w:http://www.quark.com
Adobe
w:http://www.adobe.com
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