I call BS. Tons of people are still on XP and see no reason to switch. Both corporate and non-corporate alike. XP was selling new licenses at least through last summer (last time I purchased brand new, name brand computers with XP pre-installed.) Those actually counted as Win7 sales from M$ perspective, though.
And if you bought XP last summer... well that was your call. XP was acceptable in 2002. It's 2011.
WinXP doesn't have several of the security features in newer versions of Windows. And even those it does have aren't as good. Such as buffer overflow protection was updated in Win7, but not since XPSP2 for XP.
It's fundamentally less secure top to bottom. Which is why there is exist many vulnerabilities that exist on XP, but not Win7.
UPDATE: For a concrete example, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2009/03/20/enhanced-g... -- added as a result of http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.... . There are a plethora of these sorts of things that architecturally make Win7 different than XP when it comes to security.
Sticking with XP does not mean I don't want (or can't have) a modern browser. FF and Chrome both happily support XP, I'll get my modern browsing experience that way if MS is incapable of supporting its own OS. The problem with XP not being supported by IE9 is that corporates (or home users) who have (or think they have) some reason not to use something other than IE (or use something else in conjunction with IE) are stuck with IE8.
Upgrading from XP to something newer is not a five minute task. Corporate environments require a lot of testing before a simple update goes out sometimes, so a whole OS change is not a small job. Even for me as a home user it is significant hassle: you can't do an in-place upgrade so I'd have to completely reinstall the OS, re-install and reconfigure all my apps, restore all my data from backups, and so forth. Why would I volunteer for all that work if there wasn't a compelling reason? My work time is quite costly and my personal time, while having no monetary value associated with it, is valuable to me in a number other significant ways. And that is without mentioning I'd have to pay for that upgrade I don't particularly need (and hey, that money is needed, there is vodka and cake to buy!).
I know there are reasons for upgrading but they are not compelling reasons for me. Better firewall? I've got one thanks. Better browser? I've got two of those. DX10/DX11? I'm not that much of a gamer that the difference matters and if a game turns up that doesn't support DX9 I'll just not buy it until I have other reason to install a newer Windows (by which time it'll be in a bargain bucket instead of costing £30+£100 for the game plus Windows) if I ever buy it at all. Interface improvements? Nice as they may be, I can certainly live without them.
To add my own bad analogy to the collection in this thread: upgrading from XP just to be able to run a better browser then IE8 is like saving 2p per gallon of petrol by taking a 1000 mile round trip to get to the cheapest pump in the country.
In fact you can still purchase Windows licenses with the right to downgrade to XP, and will be able to for the life of Windows 7.
I'm a sysadmin and I'm perfectly happy with XP for at least the next year or two. There's no great benefit from Windows 7 that would justify the major effort of reviewing all of our software for compatibility.
There are security benefits. There are usability benefits. There are - you know - software compatibility benefits.
Why are you holding back your company?
if you get rid of China and S. Korea, IE6 is probably less then 5%.
Pardon me? Please clarify what do you mean by this.