80% of enterprises in Cyprus use social media, Eurostat study finds

Cyprus is among the EU Member States where a high percentage of enterprises use social media, where the share of total turnover generated by web sales was higher than the share generated via EDI-type sales, and where a high share of enterprises with web sales selling via e-commerce marketplaces.

This is according to a Eurostat report on ‘Digital economy and society statistics - enterprises’ which, among other things, said, Cyprus is one of eight countries recording percentages higher than 70%. With Malta leading the way with 87.1%, Cyprus was among seven other countries also including Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland where the recorded figures were higher than 70%. For Cyprus, the number stood at 79.94% in 2023, the most recent year for which numbers were available. The EU-wide average was 60.9% while Bulgaria had the lowest share of enterprises using social media at 38%.

The report, which drew on figures for 2022, 2023 and 2024, also found that Cyprus was one of the countries where the share of total turnover generated by web sales was higher than the share generated via EDI-type sales.

in relative terms, the split in turnover between that generated from e-sales via EDI-type messages and that generated by web sales was most pronounced in Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Hungary, where EDI-type sales accounted for a share of total turnover that was at least two and half times as high as that recorded for web sales.

By contrast, in the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Ireland, Greece and Cyprus, the share of total turnover generated by web sales was higher than the share generated via EDI-type sales, Eurostat said.

Cyprus was also among the EU Member States with high shares of enterprises with web sales selling via e-commerce marketplaces. This was recorded in Greece (50.2 %), Cyprus (52.9 %), Italy (57.7 %) and Poland (59.5 %).

As Eurostat noted, during 2022, 84.7 % of enterprises in the EU used their own website or apps for sales, while 42.9 % used an e-commerce marketplace. More than 95 % of enterprises with web sales sold online via their own website or apps in Estonia (97.3 %), Denmark (95.6 %) and Finland (95.1 %). The lowest share was registered in Lithuania (42.8 %), where enterprises with web sales preferred to sell via e-commerce marketplaces (82.3 %).

Among other things, the report’s foundings also showed that significantly more enterprises in Cyprus were using AI technologies in 2024 than in 2023 with the figures rising from 4.67% to 7.9%.

Among EU Member States, AI technologies were used by more than 15 % of enterprises in Denmark 15.2 % and Finland (15.1 %). The take up of AI technologies was at a low level in the majority of the other EU Member States, including Cyprus as mentioned above, with shares below 10 %. The lowest figures were recorded in Hungary and Poland (both 3.7 %), Bulgaria (3.6 %) and Romania (1.5 %).

In 2023, the vast majority (93.9 %) of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees and self-employed persons used a fixed broadband connection to access the internet. The share was even higher for medium and large enterprises, where almost all enterprises reported to connect to the internet via fixed broadband. In Cyprus, the figure stood at 96.38 in 2023, rising to 98.07 in 2024.

In 2023, more than three quarters (78.1 %) of enterprises in the EU had a website, with a much higher share for large enterprises (94.7 %) compared with small enterprises (75.6 %). The most popular functions provided by enterprises’ websites were related to the description of goods and services and price lists (63.1 % of enterprises), advertisement of open job positions or online job application (31.3 %) and content available in at least two languages (27.4 %).

For Cyprus specifically, however, the percentage of enterprises with a website actually dropped between 2016 when the figure stood at 74.73% and 2023 by when it had dropped to 68.83%.