According to Wikipedia...

Despite the choice of the Rifle Commission to not consult Mauser in the late 1880s, he kept developing better rifles and improved attributes for his firearms which he sold to other countries. By the 1890s, he had improved the bolt design, introduced a stripper or charger clip loading method and a fixed box magazine.

Paul Mauser went two steps further in 1892 when he again improved the bolt design by adding an extractor that prevented double feeding from the magazine and changed the single column box magazine to a staggered five cartridge box design. The magazine now fit in the rifle without any part of it protruding in front of the trigger making it less apt to be damaged while still easily and quickly loaded from the five round stripper clips. These improvements were embodied in the Model 1893
German troops were issued the rifle by 1899 and used them in the Boxer Rebellion of 1901. By 1912 the Gewehr 98 replaced all other rifles for the regular army and first line reserve troops.