Apple was able to close the market share gap with Samsung in the chaebol’s own turf by more than 12 points when it came to smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter.

While still leading the chart with 2.4 million unit shipments, Samsung Electronics recorded 46 percent market share, a 9 percent decline from the year-ago period. Apple recorded 28.3 percent share, up 3.3 points. The good news comes to third-place LG, which jumped 7.4 points to 15.7 percent. The tallies were compiled by Strategy Analytics and relayed through BusinessKorea.

Yet, the annual results still show that Samsung continued to gain ground at the expense of LG and, moreso, Apple. Samsung notched 56.2 percent market share for the year in Korea, up 1.2 points. Apple loses 2.1 points to 15.6 percent and LG lost 0.4 points to 17 percent.

It’s not clear if the prestige of the iPhone X will help Apple carry on a positive trend in the peninsula — it has apparently not paid off overall — or if it will ultimately get offset by the controversy surrounding the company’s lack of disclosure when it came to throttling the performance of its older phones. There is some encouragement that local carriers are gravitating towards older, more affordable iPhones, though.