Though PDA's that feature web browsing have been around a lot longer than the iPhone, it is Apple's creation that seems to have really let mobile web browsing take off. According to a recent survey, users of iPhones are more than twice as likely to use it for web browsing than other PDA owners, with more than 80% of iPhone owners in Europe doing just that.
The study went on to find that 42% of iPhone web surfers would visit social network sites, more than four times the number of people with other PDAs. This has to be weighed with Apple's relative newness to the market and their much smaller market share - their device is a newcomer, and has been designed from the ground up to be friendly for this sort of use. Clearly, though, Apple has proven that mobile web functionality is highly desirable, and with the right device just about everyone will make use of it.