Android represented more than half of U.S. smartphone sales in the last quarter of 2013, while the ione’s share dropped to 43.9% from nearly 50% the prior year, tar rldnel ComTech said Monday.

The Android improvement in the U.S. brought it to 50.6% of the market for the quarter, up from 46.2% share in fourth quarter of 2012, tar said.

tar didn’t publish unit sales volumes, focusing instead only on market share percentages. But the overall growth in smartphone sales globally meant that Apple actually sold more iones in the fourth quarter in the U.S. compared to the 2012 final quarter, while incurring the drop in share, said tar analyst Carolina Milanesi.

”Android finished 2013 strongly, showing year-on-year share growth across 12 major global markets, including Europe, A, tin America, China pan,” said tar analyst Dominic Sunnebo in a statement. “Apple has lost share in most countries compared with this time last year, but importantly it has held strong shares in key markets, including 43.9% in the A, 29.9% in Great Britain 19% in China.”

ile the U.S. might seem to be the best market for the ione in terms of market share, tar said the ione represented 68.7% of sales in pan in the fourth quarter, with pan’s largest carrier—NTT DoCoMO—Softbank AU KDDI all selling ione models as more than half of their inventory.

ndows one also grew in share in nearly every market tar followed. In the U.S., ndows one had 4.3% of the market, up from 2.4% a year earlier. In Italy, it had 17% of the market, well above iOS at 12.8% but also well behind Android at 66%. ndows one had its the largest market share in Italy of any of the markets that tar reported on.

Milanesi said that ndows ones sold by Nokia under the mia br were not what would have been expected for the holiday season, “but were not as bad as initial headlines made them out to be.” Nokia said it sold 8.2 million mia phones for the fourth quarter, down from the 8.8 million sold in the prior quarter.

”The slowdown in Nokia momentum, I believe, had more to do with carriers being cautious to sell in a transitional period while they see what Microsoft will do with the mia line,” Milanesi added. “That, plus the new ione models the Samsung promotions over the holidays make the U.S. market a challenging one for a br—Nokia—that is still not top of mind for consumers.”

Microsoft is expected to complete its $7.4 billion purchase of Nokia’s hset division this quarter.