Having featured some statistics about the iPhone a few weeks ago, I thought it was only fitting that we cover the mobile web as well. We all know it's important and the next best, scratch that, the current best thing to keep an eye on, but what are the numbers actually?  Check them out below (all directly quoted):

From Mobile Marketing Association Worldwide Study Indicates Strong Consumer Demand for a Better Mobile Web May 2008

• Nearly 90 percent of consumer respondents stated that they would be more likely to choose an airline with mobile check-in facilities over one that did not offer them
• Nearly 50 percent of respondents said that a poor experience on their initial use of the mobile Web has made them "reluctant to access" either the site – or the Internet in general – on their mobile phones again
• Only two percent of participants in the survey who have purchased a phone in the past six months chose an iPhone
• And of those who are looking to buy in the next 12 months, only 4% will choose an iPhone. This indicates that brands who don't optimize their mobile services for a variety of mobile phones will provide a substandard mobile Internet experience for a vast majority of consumers.
• Almost two-thirds of participants stated that they would consider purchasing theater tickets, take-out food and travel tickets via a mobile phone
• 63 percent of survey respondents said they would be more likely to give up their money than their mobile "smart phone" if they were mugged

Credit: Milika Sekulic

From sawebstats wiki mobile (date uncertain)

• Between 25 - 30million Mobile users in SA in 2007

From Opera Software State of the Mobile Web June 2008

Most popular handsets

1.    Nokia N70
2.    Nokia N73
3.    Nokia 6300
4.    Sony Ericsson K750i
5.    BlackBerry 8310
6.    Nokia 6233
7.    Nokia 6600
8.    Samsung E250
9.    Sony Ericsson W810i
10.    Nokia 5300 

• Opera Mini users viewed more than 3.2 billion pages in June. In June, each person using Opera Mini viewed 223 pages on average. Since May, page views have gone up 9.4%
• In June, 14.5 million Opera Mini users generated more than 46.7 million MB of data for operators worldwide
• Since May, the data consumed went up by 8.4%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 311 million MB of data in the month of June

Top 10 sites in South Africa (# of unique users)

South Africa

1.   facebook.com
2.   google.com
3.   yahoo.com
4.   wikipedia.org
5.   gamejump.com
6.   my.opera.com (up from 8)
7.   youtube.com
8.   mxit.co.za (new)
9.   peperonity.com (up from 10)
10.   webmail.co.za (new)