Microsoft's newest OS, not a fast starter out of the blocks, now holds third place among all operating systems. (Credit: Net Applications) Windows 8 has hit a new milestone. It's now the third most used operating system in the world, at least in the eyes of market tracker Net Applications. For the month of June, Windows 8 scored 5.1 percent of all desktop OS Web traffic seen by Net Applications. That boost helped Microsoft's latest OS finally leapfrog over Windows Vista, which grabbed a 4.62 percent share last month. The most recent figure showed a healthy gain for Windows 8 from its 4.27 percent share in May and continued growth since its official release in October. Over the same time, Vista has seen its popularity plummet, though its June share actually showed a slight rise from 4.51 percent in May. Vista's successor, Windows 7, remained the top dog of operating systems with a share of 44.37 percent last month, leaving the older Windows XP in second place with 37.17 percent. Looking at it from a broader view, Windows in general captured 91.51 percent of the market in June, followed by the Mac OS with 7.2 percent and Linux with 1.28 percent. Read the CNET Editors' Take Microsoft Windows 8.1 Editors' Take: Windows 8.1 works toward solving many of the problems users had with Windows 8 and adds several useful new features to boot. Read More
Microsoft's newest OS, not a fast starter out of the blocks, now holds third place among all operating systems.
Windows 8 has hit a new milestone. It's now the third most used operating system in the world, at least in the eyes of market tracker Net Applications.
For the month of June, Windows 8 scored 5.1 percent of all desktop OS Web traffic seen by Net Applications. That boost helped Microsoft's latest OS finally leapfrog over Windows Vista, which grabbed a 4.62 percent share last month.
The most recent figure showed a healthy gain for Windows 8 from its 4.27 percent share in May and continued growth since its official release in October. Over the same time, Vista has seen its popularity plummet, though its June share actually showed a slight rise from 4.51 percent in May.
Vista's successor, Windows 7, remained the top dog of operating systems with a share of 44.37 percent last month, leaving the older Windows XP in second place with 37.17 percent. Looking at it from a broader view, Windows in general captured 91.51 percent of the market in June, followed by the Mac OS with 7.2 percent and Linux with 1.28 percent.
Microsoft Windows 8.1
Editors' Take: Windows 8.1 works toward solving many of the problems users had with Windows 8 and adds several useful new features to boot. Read More
