If there's one country Apple Inc. might need to focus its marketing on, it's Italy. According to new smartphone operating system market share figures, Apple's iOS slipped to third place in Italy.

Kantar Worldpanel released the latest smartphone platform market share figures for the three months ending in November 2013 in Italy. Based on the new data, Microsoft's Windows Phone improved its percentage share and toppled Apple.

Apple's iOS platform fell by 9.1 percentage points between the three months ending in November 2013 and the same period in 2012. As a result, iOS accounted for 11 percent of the Italian smartphone operating system market share, which is down from 20.1 percent in 2012.

Windows Phone improved its market share percentage by 4.2 percentage points. The Microsoft smartphone operating system finished the three months ending in November 2013 with 16 percent, which was enough to place second based on Kantar's figures.

Google easily maintained first place while taking a double-digit percentage increase compared to 2012's figures. The Google Android smartphone operating system finished the three months ending in November 2013 with 67.9 percent of the market share, which is an increase of 11.6 percentage points from the same period in 2012.

BlackBerry held its fourth place position. BlackBerry lost 1.4 percentage points during the three months ending in November last year and accounted for 1.9 percent of the market share in Italy. By the time November 2012 concluded, BlackBerry had represented 3.3 percent of the market share.

What do you think about Windows Phone topping iOS? Will it ever happen in the United States?

__

For the latest updates, follow Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO