The Boston area is home to top market research firms that focus on business and technology including Forrester Research, International Data Corporation (IDC), and Yankee Group. Among other services, these firms conduct market research and calculate growth projections that help companies — corporations and startups alike — understand the direction of their market, plot competitors, make better business decisions, and innovate.

We checked out what these firms have been publishing recently around the industries that some of Boston’s fastest growing startups are in: mobile, social, e-commerce, analytics, video, and the cloud. Below are some tweetable datapoints from the reports:

Forrester Research: US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2010

• Retail sales will hit $52 billion in the US this holiday season, up 16% over last year [tweet]
• 37% of holiday purchases are expected to be made online this year, vs. 30% last year [tweet]
• 18% of online adults will use their phones to compare prices this holiday; 16% to locate a store [tweet]

Forrester Research: A Global Update Of Social Technographics®

• The number of people who joined social networks is up 11% in Europe, 18% in China, 11% in Australia, and 8% in North America [tweet]
• 33% of online consumers in the US regularly watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube, but only 10% upload videos [tweet]

IDC: Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker

• The worldwide smartphone market grew 90% year over year in Q3, while the total mobile phone market grew 15% (a 4th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth) [tweet]
• The top 5 largest smarphone vendors in the world in terms of units shipped are Nokia (33%), Apple (17%), RIM (15%), Samsung (9%), and HTC (7%) [tweet]

IDC: Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2010–2014 Forecast

• The business analytics software market is expected to grow at a 7% compound annual growth rate over the next five years [tweet]

Yankee Group: From Killer App to Killer Enabler: Making Mobile Video Services Pay

• The number of mobile TV and video users is expected to rise from 250 million in 2010 to 455 million in 2014 [tweet]
• In 2014, mobile TV and video is projected to deliver over $24 billion in revenue to mobile network operators [tweet]

Yankee Group: Anywhere Enterprise: 2010 U.S. Cloud Computing FastView Survey

• In two years, 39% of enterprises plan to shift at least one-third of their IT budget to cloud services [tweet]
• Security and regulatory compliance are the top barriers to enterprise cloud adoption [tweet]

To stay on top of more research coming out of the Boston area, follow their updates on Twitter: @Forrester, @IDC, and @YankeeGroup.