1.27 billion people (31% of all mobile users) access the web through mobile devices

"Then I found finally the first analyst to give an update for 2009 for mobile web/mobile internet/mobile browsing usage. Note that this is not "the real internet" on a phone, this is any kind of browsing use, both the "real internet" like say on an iPhone or email on a Blackberry; as well as the "mobile internet" ie WAP usage of what is often operator/carrier portals. Yet, if you accss Google on a phone, regardless of whether via web in the traditional HTML and WWW basis, or via WAP, it is still a browser-based service. Same for Ebay or Yahoo or Twitter or Facebook. Any browser based access on a phone, that is "equivalent" to accessing that same internet service and its (usually mobile-optimimized) mobile site.
So Yankee Group reports that we now have 31% of all mobile phone owners using the mobile web, If you feel that it cannot be, that you don't see that many users around you in your world, remember these are global numbers, so they include of course all those countries where mobile web use is far greater than PC based internet use, such as South Africa or Japan or India etc. And yes, previously it was me and my consultancy saying so, now we have a major analyst house, Yankee Group, giving us the number.
31%? how many users is that worldwide? at the start of the year we had 4.1 billion mobile phone subscriptions on the planet, so at the start of 2009, we had reached the level of 1.27 billion mobile browsing users."
Source: Yankee Group, reported by Tomi Ahonen, 30th October 2009