Amid several years of declining sales, the supposed “death” of the personal computer has been announced repeatedly. But although it’s true that most consumers no longer use PCs as their primary computing device, a new study from the information technology professionals network Spiceworks Inc. shows that traditional computers still have plenty of life left in them yet when it comes to the enterprise.

The study, The Future of the PC, shows that an overwhelming 87 percent majority of company employees continue to use laptops and desktops as their primary work device, and that organizations aren’t intending to replace them for the foreseeable future.

The findings show that 60 percent of employees still use desktops as their primary work device, while 27 percent more rely on laptops. Meanwhile, 5 percent of workers rely on so-called “thin clients,” or lightweight computers linked to servers, while 3 percent use tablets and just 2 percent use smartphones as their primary devices.

What’s more, the survey found that although the use of mobile devices is pretty much universal these days, most IT professionals believe they will only be used as secondary devices for the foreseeable future. That’s because mobile devices are useful for tasks like browsing the web and checking documents, but still present “usability challenges” when it comes to more demanding tasks such as inputting data and creating, editing and saving documents.

“Although many predict the popularity of mobile devices will lead to the ‘death of the PC,’ this prophecy won’t become a reality anytime soon in the corporate world,” said Peter Tsai, senior technology analyst at Spiceworks. “It’s true that desktop PCs will become less prevalent in the near future, giving way to laptops, but tablets and smartphones still face usability challenges that prevent them from enabling key tasks in the workplace. So for the foreseeable future, traditional PCs will remain dominant while tablets and smartphones serve as complementary devices.”

Another intriguing finding from Spiceworks’ study is that most enterprises seem to be quite satisfied with traditional PC hardware, and are happy to do without modern features such as touchscreens and “two-in-ones” that can double as tablet devices.

When asked what factors they deem most important when buying PCs for their organization, an overwhelming 87 percent of IT pros said reliability was the main consideration. Other important factors included performance (cited by 68 percent of respondents), security (62 percent) and cost (54 percent). In contrast, just 9 percent said “innovative features” were something that they figured into their buying decisions.

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