Forecasts made some years ago about the growth of E-Commerce (by Forrester if I remember well) were estimating that in 2010 10% of the business would be realized online. It seems that such predictions were rather pessimistic: according to a Eurostat press release published on Jan 19, 2010 E-Commerce in the EU accounted in 2008 already for 12% of enterprises' turnover. According to the same report 93% of the European enterprises have access to the Internet (champions were Finland (100%), Denmark, Austria and Slovakia (all 98%) and Germany (97%) and 82% have also access to fixed broadband connection with the highest percentages in Finland (94%), Spain and Malta (both 93%) and France (92%). As to the E-Commerce turnover by destination the largest percentage in the EU is done within the country (73% average); 19% is realized with other EU countries and 8% outside the EU. I expect in 2010 that EU E-Commerce will exceed 15% of the total turnover in the union.
Conclusions: E-Commerce has become mainstream business activity in the EU but more effort must be done to reach international markets. In the global Internet marketplace the potential is enormous. The summary of the report is available in
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/4-19012010-BP/EN/4-19012010-BP-EN.PDF
