Business e-transactions see upward trend in Cyprus

Business transactions over the Internet saw an upward trend in Cyprus, businesses started using more high speed Internet connections and a small increase of companies choosing to have a website was also recorded, recent data released by the Cyprus Statistical Service shows.

In 2015, the number of enterprises which purchased goods or services over the internet nearly doubled, reaching 42.7% compared to 22.1% in the previous year.

Sales also recorded an increase, since 12.4% of all enterprises received orders for goods and services over the internet compared to 9.9% in the previous year.

According to the data in 2016, the number of enterprises using high speed internet connections was also up.

The percentage of enterprises having maximum download speed between 10Mbit/s and 30Mbit/s has reached 41% compared to 26.3% in 2015 and for speed between 30Mbit/s and 100Mbit/s have doubled compared to 2015 reaching the percentage of 12.2%.

In 2016, 61.5% of the enterprises use mobile broadband connection to the Internet compared to 57.4% in 2015.

In 2016, 57.8% of all enterprises use mobile broadband connection to the Internet via smart phones compared to 53.8% in 2015.

Fixed broadband connection to the Internet is used by nearly all enterprises since 96.2% have some kind of fixed broadband connection.

Compared to theprevious year (71.8%) more businesses chose to have a website in 2016 (74.7%), 40.9% of business websites have links or references to the enterprise’s social media profiles (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, etc.) and 23.2% of them advertise open job positions or offer online job applications.

According the Statistical Service`s data 64.4% of businesses use social media with social networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) being the most popular with a percentage of 63.3%.

Enterprise’s blogs or microblogs (e.g. Twitter, etc.) follow with 29%, multimedia content sharing websites (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, etc.) with 24% and Wiki based knowledge sharing tools with 2.8%.

Only a 15.3% of businesses buy cloud computing services used over the Internet. The percentage reaches 37.7% in large and enterprises, 21.3% in medium enterprises, and 13.9% in small enterprises.

Regarding the employment of ICT specialists, 24.6% of all enterprises employ ICT specialists, the percentage is greater (86.9%) in large businesses, falls to 48.8% in medium enterprises and to 19.6% between small enterprises.

Source: Famagusta Gazette