Samsung beat Apple by a narrow margin

The back and forth battle for king of the mobile hill went to Samsung this round, though not by as much as they would have hoped in a quarter with a late Apple launch.

Samsung overtook the iPhone on Apple’s home turf in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, according to a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ report obtained by Fortune Thursday.

In CIRP’s survey, Samsung accounted for 38% of U.S. mobile phone sales in Q3 2013 compared with 34% for Apple.