Analytics, Covid-19, Internet, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Technology

At the beginning of the year, before emergency situation was declared in the country due to COVID-19, 74.4 % of enterprises ensured all or part of employees with portable devices for mobile internet use, and that is 12.8 percentage points more than in 2019. In the group of small enterprises, compared to 2019, this indicator rose by 13.6 percentage points, but in the group of medium-sized and large enterprises – by 9.7 and 3.4 percentage points, respectively. For work Internet was used by 44.4 % of all employees of enterprises, but for 24.1 % of employees enterprises ensured portable devices for mobile internet use.

One fifth or 20 % of enterprises employ their own ICT specialists, of which 74.4 % of large enterprises, 35.5 % of medium-sized enterprises and 15.2 % of small enterprises. In 2019, compared to the previous year, share of enterprises outsourcing ICT service providers has increased, and in total their number comprised 83.8 % of all enterprises. The largest growth was in group of small enterprises by 9.3 percentage points. In large enterprises this indicator rose by 7.7 percentage points, but in medium-sized – reduced by 0.5 percentage points.

In 2020, 21.3 % of enterprises used paid cloud computing services4, and in two years this indicator has risen by 6.8 percentage points, of which in medium-sized enterprises – by 9 percentage points, in large enterprises – by 8.4 %, but in small – by 6.2 percentage points. Use of almost all kinds of paid cloud computing services increased, however, the largest growth (of 21.1 percentage point) was in use of file storage services.

In 2020, 24.3 % of all enterprises used Internet of Things or interchangeably connected devices or systems collecting or exchanging data, and which can be monitored or remotely controlled using the Internet. Internet of Things was used by every second (52.6 %) of large enterprises, as well as by 38.1 % of medium-sized and 20.7 % of small enterprises. Mostly (47.3 % of enterprises) Internet of Things was used in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply, water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities.

Use of Internet of Things in enterprises in 2020 (% of all enterprises)

Survey on the use of ICT in enterprises was carried out at the beginning of 2020 with co-financing of European Union. Aim of the project is to acquire qualitative and internationally comparable statistical information on the use of ICT in enterprises and development of e-commerce in Latvia.

Methodological explanations:

1) The survey covered 2762 enterprises employing ten or more people in the following economic activities: manufacturing, electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply, water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities, construction, trade, hotels and restaurants, transportation and storage, information and communication, real estate activities, professional, scientific and technical activities, administrative and support service activities and repair of computers and communication equipment.

2) Small enterprises – those employing 10–49 people, medium-sized – those employing 50– 249 people, and large – those employing 250 people or more.

3) E-commerce is sales of goods or services over the Internet on the enterprise website, on e-commerce websites used by several enterprises, and sales using electronic data exchange – exchange of entrepreneurship documents in standard electronic form among business partners, which is suitable for automated order processing.

4) Cloud computing service is ICT service on the Internet providing access to software, data processing capacity and data storage space (e.g., Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, Windows OneDrive/SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc.).