Statistics Austria:

Austria’s companies need to catch up digitally

The degree of digitalization depends on the sector.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

More than half of Austrian companies have not yet completed the digital transformation. This is because only 47% of domestic companies use information and communication technologies (ICT) such as cloud services, data analytics and artificial intelligence. This puts Austria in the bottom third in a European comparison, noted Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas in a press release. The EU-27 average is 55 percent.

This means that Austria is "still a long way off the EU's 'Digital Decade' target, according to which at least three quarters of companies should be using advanced technologies by 2030", added Thomas. According to surveys by Statistics Austria, artificial intelligence is only used by eleven percent of companies. Data analytics is used by almost one in four companies (24%). And cloud services are used by one in three companies (36 percent).

Depending on the sector
The use of ICT depends not least on the sector, the size of the company and its location. These technologies are more likely to be used in the service sector (50 percent) than in the manufacturing sector (40 percent). For example, 85% of companies in the information and communication sector use at least one of the technologies, while only 33% of companies in the construction sector use cloud services, data analytics or artificial intelligence.

Around 85% of companies with 250 or more employees use these technologies. And 64% of medium-sized companies with 50 to 249 employees make use of the opportunities offered by ICT. In contrast, only 43 percent of small companies with 10 to 49 employees do so.

Regional differences
But there are also regional differences: advanced information and communication technologies are mainly used in Vienna (55 percent) and Vorarlberg (54 percent). Burgenland brings up the rear in this respect with 34%.

In a European comparison, Finland and Denmark are the leaders in the use of ICT with a share of 88% and 77% respectively. This also makes them the only countries that have already reached the EU target of 75%, while Austria lags behind in a Europe-wide comparison. Bringing up the rear in Europe are Romania and Bulgaria, where only 29% of companies use advanced ICT.