Poll responses show while there are intriguing signs the end of the market struggle is sill far from settled

Macworld UK has just published the results of a survey they’ve recently concluded amongst their readership. 772 opinions were receieved and it seems about the only thing it confirms is that the Adobe-Quark shakeout is still vigourously in progress, and DTP War II’s winner is not likely to be crowned soon.

A sampling of the response, with Macworld UK’s numbers:

• When readers were asked if they would move to QuarkXPress 7 when it ships, 490 people–63 per cent–said they were sticking with InDesign.
• 16 per cent (or 124 responders) said they were planning to upgrade from XPress 6.x or earlier to 7, but 6 per cent (47) said they’d be sticking with an earlier version of XPress for now.
• 6 per cent (44) said they’d be switching back from InDesign to XPress when 7 debuted, and 9 per cent (69) will go to XPress from some other application.

People are, by and large, seeming to respond positively to Quark’s customer service improvments and while many seem to be happy with the direction that Adobe is going in there seems to be concern that Adobe might be tending toward the sort of complacency that Quark exhibited, and this perception primarily seems to be driven by Quark’s first-to-the-front imminent availablility of XPress 7 in Universal Beta format.

This is not a universal view, however. As one of Macworld UK’s correspondents was quoted:

It’s ironic that as Quark gets its house in order, many see Adobe as becoming a little complacent,however, at the moment most Mac professionals are not using Intel machines and by the time even a significant proportion are, Universal CS3 will be on the market.

The article can be read [1] at the end of this link.

Adobe, Quark, poll, analysis