Some new and notable mobility stats to chew on this week:

• Tablet usage in the workplace rose to 12 percent of workers, from 7 percent in February (per Forrester).
• PC shipments in third quarter fell more than 8 percent from a year earlier — the steepest drop since 2001 (per IDC and Gartner).
• Sixty-six percent of employees use two or more devices (including desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets) every day (per Forrester).

Analysts and CIOs have been predicting the death of the PC for some time now, and The Wall Street Journal attributes the drop in PC shipments to the rise of tablet use, along with sluggish economic factors. But it’s important to note that 82 percent of workers still use a desktop computer, according to Forrester, while 53 percent use a laptop in the office at some point during the day and 35 percent put to use a smartphone, too.

That’s a lot compared to the 12 percent who utilize tablets, even though that figure has risen 5 percentage points in the past eight months. The shift toward tablets is certainly real, but we seem to be a long ways off from tablets taking over. There’s also this survey of CIOs that deems the tablet as the least valuable tool in the workplace. (Do you agree?)

The other interesting point to note is that Forrester reports a drop in the number of devices workers use: In February, 74 percent of employees reported using two or more devices, while 66 percent do so now. That contradicts Critix’s prediction of employees utilizing an average of six devices by 2020. 

Read it Here: Forrester’s report on mobile adoption in the enterprise; and WSJ: PC Sales Go Into a Tailspin.

More: Tablet Sales Outpacing Forecasts.

Image used under Creative Commons by Flickr user Jon Mountjoy.