Only a month since its launch on July 29, Windows 10 has already nabbed the title of becoming the fourth most popular desktop operating system in the world. If you are curious, Windows 7 remains the unbeatablemarket leader.

Windows 10's growing market share:

New data from Net Applications, a California-based analytics firm, reveals that Windows 10 has broken the one-month record of user share for any Windows operating system. Windows 10 now has a 5.2 percent of desktop operating system share putting it at the fourth place and helping it whiz past OS X and Vista. The market is still led strongly by Windows 7 at57.7 percent, followed by Windows XP at 12.1 percent and Windows 8.1 at 11.4 percent. This data measures the number of unique users who use the operating system to go online.

The user share jump tracked by Net Applications is the largest in the last 11 years and beats Windows 7 which grew by 2.6 percent when it was launched in October 2011. This is of course not a surprise as unlike earlier Windows versions, Microsoft is offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade to millions of users worldwide who are currently on Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 OS versions. Launched in July, it has so far been downloaded and installed on over 75 million devices, worldwide.

It may have been a record for Windows but is nowhere close to the 21.1 percent increase of the user share (% of all the Macs) of OS X Mavericks on November 2013. This shows Mavericks had at least four times more share of all OS X versions than Windows 10's 5.7% share of all the Windows devices. While both free upgrades, Apple has traditionally enjoyed a smoother road with its new OS versions to upgrade to every year. As a first for Microsoft, the operating system is still being compared to Windows 7 which remains the favorite Windows versions for many users. Not only that, unlike Apple, Microsoft has to deal with its hardware partnersand a comparatively very large user base to bring onto a new OS as easily as Apple accomplishes every year.

Regardless of the as-yet unjustified comparison with OS X adoption rate and even with the privacy concerns and various other compatibility issues that Windows 10 users keep reporting, the data signals historic adoption rate when compared to earlier Windows versions. If Windows 10keeps going with this pace, which is unlikely as adoption rate is slowing down, Microsoft might just achieve the 1 billion mark well in its deadline of two years.