How much are European companies using data?
Data user companies generate, exploit, collect and analyse digital data intensively and use what they learn to improve their business. The European Data Market Study has made exciting and insightful findings about geographical and industry distribution of these companies and their size.
Geographical distribution of data user companies
- The UK, Germany, Italy and Spain muster alone almost two thirds of the total number of the European data user companies.
- The Netherlands, the UK, Ireland and Luxembourg emerge as clear leaders with a percentage share of user companies between 9% and 12% of their total amount of companies.
- A composite group made of larger economies like France, Germany, and Italy, complemented by smaller Member States like Sweden, Austria, Finland, Portugal, and Denmark exhibits data users’ shares between 6.4% (the EU average) and 9%.
- The largest industries by number of data user companies in 2016 were professional services, manufacturing, wholesale and retail and transport totaling together almost two thirds of Europe’s population of data users.
- Less populated industries such as information and communication technologies, healthcare and finance registered a growth rate well above the EU28 average in 2016, demonstrating their dynamism in terms of adoption and take-up of data-driven technologies.
- In 2016, the SMEs' share of the data user population was very high at 98.9% (in line with the 99% share of SMEs among total enterprises).
- The penetration of data users stood at 7% for companies with more than 250 employees and at 6.4% for SMEs in 2016.