According to Net Applications, Windows 8 has achieved a milestone in the month of August, overtaking the market share of all versions of Mac OS X combined. Microsoft's latest operating system gained 2.01 percentage points in August to end with 7.41% of the market, allowing it to gain a narrow lead on Mac OS X, which posted a market share of 7.28%.
The growth Windows 8 experienced in August was the largest month-on-month gain since its launch in October last year, although it's not quite clear what sparked the sudden influx of upgrades. It could perhaps be related to the price cuts of Microsoft's Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets, or the leaks of the Windows 8.1 RTM, or simply a large amount of mid-year system purchases.
Net Applications: Operating system market share, August 2013
| Operating System | August 2013 Market Share | July 2013 Market Share | Market Share Gain |
| Windows 8 | 7.41% | 5.40% | 2.01% |
| Windows 7 | 45.63% | 44.46% | 1.14% |
| Windows Vista | 4.11% | 4.24% | -0.13% |
| Windows XP | 33.66% | 37.19% | -3.53% |
| Windows Other | 0.38% | 0.27% | 0.11% |
| Windows Total | 91.19% | 91.56% | -0.37% |
| Mac OS X | 7.28% | 7.19% | 0.09% |
| Linux | 1.52% | 1.25% | 0.27% |
Windows 7 also saw a gain of 1.14% in August, while Windows Vista and Windows XP declined by 0.13 and 3.53 percent respectively. Overall, Windows saw a fractional decline of 0.37% in the month, which allowed both Mac OS X and Linux to gain a small amount of market share.
Despite gains for Windows 8 in August, it seems Microsoft hasn't been able to convince a large number of Windows 7 users to upgrade. The launch of Windows 8.1 later this year, which addresses a number of complaints surrounding Windows 8, may prompt more users to upgrade their OS, but at least for now it seems Windows 7 and Windows XP will remain kings of the market.