Quark is an American software company.
Founded in 1981, Quark Software is a privately owned US software company, best known for its desktop page layout and design software, QuarkXPress.
Taking its name from the elementary particle quark, the company’s first products were World Juggler and Catalyst. World Juggler was the first word processor on Apple III, while Catalyst was a program which let users run floppy-disk based applications from their hard drive.
How did Adobe put a stop to Quark’s success?
By the late 1990s, Quark had established itself in the desktop publishing market, quickly becoming the standard in desktop publishing. By the end of the 90s, the company boasted a market share of around 90%.
However, Adobe hit the success of the company hard. Amid intense crticism over slow innovation cycles, high prices and poor customer service, the launch of Adobe InDesign lured away many customers from Quark. The 1999 InDesign release was followed by the 2003 release of Adobe Creative Suite, which resulted in further loss of market share for Quark.
Due to the pressures resulting Adobe dominance in the market, Quark started to shift more towards the enterprise dynamic publishing market.
