The Boston area is home to top market research firms that focus on business and technology including Forrester Research, International Data Corporation (IDC), Strategy Analytics, 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 ultimately innovate.

With the rise of the second screen, we checked out what these firms have been publishing recently about mobile. Below are some tweetable datapoints from their reports in the past month:

Smartphones

— In 2010 303M smartphones were shipped across the globe, up 74% from 2009 (IDC)

— Worldwide mobile phone market grew 18% in Q4, a new quarterly high driven by smartphones (IDC)

— Worldwide smartphone shipments increased 87% year-over-year in Q4 to 101M units shipped (IDC)

— Multi-core processor penetration in smartphones will rise from 15% in 2011 to 45% in 2015 (Strategy Analytics)

Tablets

— The worldwide tablet market grew 45% in Q3 2010, driven almost exclusively by the iPad (IDC)

— 4.8M tablets were shipped in Q3 2010, compared to 3.3M in Q2, with the iPad representing 90% of units shipped (IDC)

— 17M tablets were shipped in 2010, with 45M projected to ship in 2011 and 71M in 2012 (IDC)

— Global tablet device revenues will increase from $16B in 2010 to $46B in 2014 (Yankee Group)

— In 2015, the US tablet market will generate more than $7B in revenue (Yankee Group)

— Annual tablet sales will more than triple between 2010 and 2015 at a CAGR of 31%, from 8M units shipped to 30M (Yankee Group)

— The average tablet price tag in the US will drop to just $237 by 2015 (Yankee Group)

— By 2014, Asia-Pacific – namely China – will own 58% of the global tablet market while North America’s share will drop to just 17% (from 37% in 2010) (Yankee Group)

Services, Apps & Content

— Mobile subscriptions will pass 6B this year as the world moves towards a 100% penetration by early 2014 (Strategy Analytics)

— Cellular service revenues are closing in on the $1 trillion mark, with 3G carrying the market forward and contributing over 70% of all service revenues by 2015 (Strategy Analytics)

— US e-book downloads will grow at an 83% CAGR by 2013, while paid mobile app downloads will grow at a 72% CAGR (Yankee Group)

— US e-book sales will grow from $313M in 2009 to $2.7B by 2013 (Yankee Group)

— By 2013, US consumers will purchase 381M e-books, roughly 4X the amount purchased in 2010 (Yankee Group)

— By 2013, the average e-book retail price will fall to $7 from more than $9 in 2009 (Yankee Group)

— Smart home applications subscriptions in the US (remote energy management, broadband-enabled home security) will grow from a base of fewer than 200,000 (2010) to 3M in 2011 (Strategy Analytics)

— US smart home applications will be a $5B market in 2015 (Strategy Analytics)

What data point are you most surprised or excited about? Tweet it out, or let us know in the comments!