93% of the enterprises in Bulgaria used computers and 91.3% had internet access

The results of the 2015 survey showed that 93.0% of the enterprises used computers and 91.3% had internet access. High-speed internet access becomes more and more necessary for the enterprises and 71.3% of them used fixed broadband connection during the current year, and 44.7% used mobile broadband connection, a new survey of National Statistical Institute (NSI) has shown.   

The speed of internet connections has also increased and half of the enterprises using fixed broadband connection had a connection with download speed more than 30 Mbps.

Nearly half of the enterprises (48.2%) maintained their own website, the highest proportion was in the group of enterprises with 250 and more persons employed (84.4%). The website was mainly used for presenting goods or services (82.3%)¹, description of privacy and security policy (36.2%), as well as links or references to the enterprise's social media profiles (29.8%).

In 2015, 29.1% of persons employed used a computer at least once a week for executing their work duties and 25.0% were granted access to the internet. Small enterprises (10 - 49 persons employed) had the highest relative share of persons employed who were using computers (31.2%) and the highest relative share of employed using internet (28.4%). More and more enterprises provided their employees with portable devices and during this year 8.4% of the employed used portable devices for business purposes, which was 1.2 percentage points more in comparison to the previous year.

Use of Social Media

Almost one third of the enterprises (30.3%) used social media to develop their business activity and enlarge their internet presence. Most popular were social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ etc., and 38.0% of the enterprises with 250 and more persons employed maintained a profile on a social network. Big companies were most active in the use of multimedia content sharing websites like VBox7, YouTube, Flickr, Picassa, SlideShare, etc. (14.2%) while among the small enterprises with 10 - 49 persons employed the relative share was only 6.2%.

Main purposes for which the enterprises used social media were to develop the enterprise's image or market products (e.g. advertising or launching products, etc.) (68.3%)1, to obtain or respond to customer opinions, reviews, questions (55.9%) and to collaborate with business partners or other

organizations (39.4%). Enterprises which involve customers in development or innovation of goods or services had the smallest relative share (17.4%).

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1 The relative shares were calculated on the basis of enterprises using social media.