On Oct. 18, U.S. cellular carrier Verizon announced its third-quarter results, which gives an indication that the company activated over 650K iPhone 5 in Q3 2012.

Verizon announced in a press release that the company had a "third consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth, continued strong cash flow." The company's wireless business played a vital role in the growth with smartphone sales playing a significant role of the mobile business.

 "Overall, Verizon saw a 16% increase in quarterly profits compared to last year: $1.59 billion or $0.54 per share for Q3 2012 compared to $1.37 or $0.49 per share in Q3 2011. Revenue was also up to $29.01 billion from $27.91 billion in the previous year," reported Android Authority.

The Verizon press release confirmed that the company's wireless service revenue accounted for $16.2 billion of Verizon's total revenue which is a 7.5 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

The press release did not identify individual smartphone sales by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), but mentioned that the carrier launched a line of LTE devices during Q3, such as "the DROID Incredible 4G LTE by HTC, Samsung Galaxy S III, Pantech Marauder, Intuition by LG, Samsung Galaxy Stellar, DROID RAZR M by Motorola, Apple iPhone 5; and one 4G LTE tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2."

In the third quarter, the iPhones contributed majorly to the company's smartphone business. Furthermore, the iPhone 5, released on Sept. 21, backed a major chunk of the smartphone sales for the carrier.

Verizon revealed that it has sold 6.8 million smartphones during Q3, of which 46 percent were iPhones, which comes to 3.1 million units. From the 3.1 million iPhones, only 21 percent were iPhones which ran on the carrier's LTE network. The iPhone 5 is the only iPhone model to offer LTE support indicating that Verizon sold around 650K iPhone 5's since the launch.

Other major U.S. carriers - AT&T and Sprint - are yet to announce their Q3 results. Time will tell which carrier sold the most number of iPhone 5's in the first ten days of the smartphone's release.