LONDON - September 26, 2006 - Quark Inc. today announced that Metro International, the largest and fastest-growing international newspaper in the world, has chosen to adopt QuarkXPress 7 across its entire global network to produce the world’s leading free daily newspapers. Metro International publishes 69 editions in 93 major cities in 21 countries and in 19 languages across Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Metro has a unique global reach that attracts a young, active, well-educated metropolitan audience of 18.5 million daily readers and more than 37 million weekly readers. Circulating free newspapers to such large numbers on a daily basis means that Metro International is constantly looking to reduce costs while increasing quality and efficiency, which was a key reason company representatives gave for upgrading to QuarkXPress 7, as it enables efficient and consistent desktop design, collaboration, and production. “All Metro editions carry headline local, national, and international news in a consistent and accessible format and design, so the ability to collaborate and share content is becoming increasingly important. QuarkXPress 7 enhances collaboration with Composition Zones and Job Jackets. These features will allow all Metro journalists and a network of freelancers to reach new levels of productivity and efficiency.” said Michael Mendoza, global IT director of Metro International. “Metro International publishes in 19 different languages, and as QuarkXPress 7 supports Unicode and OpenType fonts, it enables us to substantially streamline our multiple-language publishing, eliminate many unnecessary costs, and dramatically improve quality and productivity. We are confident that QuarkXPress 7 will provide us with efficient, trouble-free publishing, regardless of the language,” he said. Another aspect of the decision process for Metro International was the level of Mac OS support in the application, especially when comparing it with the competition. “As Metro has standardized on Macs for publishing, and the fact that QuarkXPress is the first major design and publishing tool with Universal support meant that it was an easy decision for us,” Mendoza said. “As part of the selection process, we evaluated [Adobe] InDesign but decided that it didn’t deliver the same level of functionality as QuarkXPress 7, nor did it offer native support for the new Intel Macs. Therefore, it simply wasn’t an option.” Matthew Wallis, Quark senior vice president of sales and marketing EMEA and Asia Pacific, said, “Reducing costs and improving productivity have long been important to the newspaper industry and in particular (in the case of the Metro International) where the business is based on free circulation titles. We are thrilled that Metro International has committed to Quark in order to achieve its objectives, and Quark remains committed to providing solutions that will streamline publishing processes, reduce costs, and increase overall efficiency for our customers.”