It seems to me that the native English speakers would be more than that...

Know what you mean, Jazz. Perhaps this is partly because the research looks at the population of such large countries in detail and classifies segments as say, Spanish first language, or Cypriot, or whatever. I know, for example, that there are many thousands of speakers of Chinese within the UK population - yet it has no officially recognised status at all, and if any white middleclass English person were to be asked they would swear on their mother's grave that England is a monolingual country! Indeed, it's one of the oddities of major urban settlements in the richer countries that it is frequently possible to say "there are more people speaking XXX in city YYYYY than in their original capital city" (insert language and major city of choice!) America of course has always had a proud and distinctive role in offering a new home to groups of people from all ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. I seem to remember, even years ago when I worked in Joisey for a while, that there were predictions that (within a measurable span) Spanish was set to become the numerically dominant language in the USA. (edit:)I have also just found a relevant quote from Crystal: "The estimated population of the USA was just under 239 millions im 1985, of whom about 215 million spoke English as a mother tongue"

I guess "fings ain't always what dey seem"

But perhaps the big picture we should retain is the stunning worldwide growth of English over time. When the Romans invaded this little island in the North Sea 2,000 years ago, "English did not exist. Five hundred years later, Englisc... was probably spoken by about as few people as currently speak Cherokee - and with about as little influence. Nearly a thousand years later,... when Shakespeare was in his prime, English was the native speech of between 5 and 7 million... it was, in the words of a contemporary, 'of small reatch, it stretcheth no further than this iland of ours, nai not there over all.' Four hundred years later... Englsih is used by at least 750 million people... is more widely scattered, more widely spoken and written, than any other language has ever been. It has become the langauge of the planet, the first truly global language." (The Story of English, McCrum et al)