Will tablets overtake laptops and PCs? Not anytime soon, if at all, according to a study by Virgin Media Business released Wednesday. Nearly half the 500 CIOs surveyed said tablets were the least valuable device to business — behind even the printer, which about 25 percent of respondents said wasn’t valuable.

The news might come as somewhat of a surprise, considering all the buzz over the tablet‘s use in the enterprise. Indeed, companies from Starbucks to local fruit stands have adopted the device. But there are still big questions to ask before going to tablet route, namely: Is the tablet more functional than the laptop? Apparently not, according to these CIOs.

“Tablet technology still has a long way to go to justify itself and sit alongside smartphones as essential business equipment,” Tony Grace, the Chief Operating Officer for Virgin Media Business, said.

Laptops and smartphones were at the bottom of the least-valuable list.

What’s not surprising is that nearly two-thirds of the CIOs  surveyed expect the desk phone to disappear from everyday use by 2017. Also on the redundancy list: PCs, with 62 percent saying the desktop computer would fall by the wayside within the next five years.

Given the rise of the BYOD trend, plus VoIP services like GoogleTalk and Skype and instant messaging and texting, desk phones certainly appear on the way out. And the mobile, remote worker has propelled the laptop ahead of the desktop. So while the tablet may not appear totally crucial to business just now, don’t expect it to completely disappear. New technology will be able to better integrate it in the enterprise in coming years, and by 2017 these CIOs could be singing a different tune.

More: No PC, Laptop, or Phone: How One Exec Does It All on a ‘Phablet.’

Image used under Creative Commons by Flickr user Chi NGUYEN.