77 percent of German companies are still not used to faxing

Since 2018, the German tech industry association Bitkom has repeatedly surveyed companies about whether they still use a fax machine to send documents.

The current figures show that approximately three out of four offices still use faxes today.

What is the information based on? The data was collected as part of a study among 640 German companies with at least 20 employees.

In detail: According to Bitkom, this is a representative survey that comes to the following results, among others:

• 77 percent of all companies surveyed still use a fax machine.
• 25 percent even say they use the fax machine frequently or very frequently.
• Compared to previous studies, a downward trend can be seen:

The fax through the ages:

• The basic functionality of fax machines was already researched in the 19th century.
• The way to wider use was paved over 100 years later with the Infotec 6000 from 1974.
• The heyday of fax machines in companies was the 1990s.

Why is fax still used?

Companies give various reasons for this. These are the three answers with the greatest agreement:

1. Faxing is unavoidable in communication with authorities (56 percent)
2. Faxing is safer than sending by post (43 percent)
3. There are well-functioning and established fax processes in the company (35 percent)

According to Bitkom, the majority of companies with fax machines rely at least partly on the more modern digital variant, which sends data in binary form over the Internet (72 percent).

In contrast, 18 percent of companies that use faxes only use the older standard, which uses telephone lines for analog communication.

How are things with you?

In the following survey, we would like to know whether you still have contact with a fax machine.

We appreciate every vote cast!

We are also interested in your anecdotes about fax machines – and your estimate of how long it will take until fax machines have completely disappeared from German companies.