Once quietly ensconced in the Apple Computer Inc world, desk-top publisher Quark Inc must have realized it can no longer complacently depend on its Apple users, and has been shopping, bagging mFactory Corp. Apart from the Burlingame, California company’s Internet-enabling mTropolis technology, the main attraction for Quark seems to be mFactory’s customer base, which will take it into ‘different market segments.’ MTropolis is an open-architecture multimedia programming application aimed at enabling rapid development of multimedia titles. Quark believes its QuarkImmedia multimedia design tool is complementary to that of mFactory. Quark president and chief executive Fred Ebrahimi says Quark is in aggressive acquisition mode, and it will continue to search for other assets to strengthen its product line, presumably those that will make it less dependent on the struggling Apple.
