That's a 25% increase in activations as compared to a year ago. It's also more than half of all Verizon smartphone activations. (Verizon activated 7.2 million smartphones.)
On the call, it said half of its iPhone activations were 3G, the other half was LTE. The iPhone 5 is the only iPhone with LTE, so it looks like half of its activations were iPhone 5s. Verizon reported the exact same breakdown in iPhone sales last quarter, as well.
What does this mean for
Last quarter, Apple had its best ever quarter at Verizon, but still came up short of analyst expectations.
Apple does very well in the U.S. It is not as strong elsewhere in the world. Verizon's iPhone activations were 13% of overall sales last quarter.
If you want something that's positive, it's this: The iPhone remains strong in the U.S. People don't care about the size of the screen, they want iOS.
If Apple were to really make a low cost iPhone, it would probably sell like crazy. That, though, has its own implications. The low cost iPhone would eat into the high end iPhone's sales. Apple has never been scared to cannibalize products in the past, so this time shouldn't be different.