Some have mentioned about MS trying to get folks off of XP, and this is one way they are trying.  Microsoft gets nothing for the browser, but gets big bucks from the OS (Although the base price for OSX and Windows is the same, OSX has a family license, Windows does not).

I would say that accountants are now running the company.  They ONLY care about the bottom line.  They have no conception about R&D or growing market share.

There are a lot of consumers or users of computers and OS's and Browsers that don't spend much time trying to figure out what Microsoft or any of the publishers/makers of this stuff have on their mind.  We all know it's all about the bottom line and how much money they feel they can make. 

Consumers will tend to use what is available and or what works for them. 

Most businesses I've seen are still using XP... I mean, their people trained on it, their software and peripherals work with it... I agree that W7 is a better.faster OS, but who really wants to spend money in this environment?

Just an addendum: I had heard that capital investments over the past year had gone into computer hardware, not software.

This is only one pf the reasons why I continue to include XP in my WB skins.

I am sure lots of folks appreciate that you do LightStar.

I enjoy looking through Google Analytics, it is very interesting to see what people are using to visit sites.

Windows 7 is the top OS that is used to visit WinCustomize.  XP is still second, but the numbers are dropping steadily.

Nothing in those charts says which browser those XP users are using, though there is probably some correlation between browser choice and the *reason* they're still using XP.

Price + recession would be the answer.

No reason not to think the browser distribution would be any different than the OS distribution, is there? 

And I'd agree with kona as to the reason why, seeing I alluded to that in the OP.

Okay, so then are we to take from this that new computer sales are declining also, since most new computer sales I take it would have the lastest OS on them?

If folks are building their own computers are they still able to buy older versions of OSs to install on them?  If not then are the number of folks building new home computers down?

oops

Not supporting XP is a huge mistake. Every XP user I know hates explorer and they not about to go back when they upgrade their computer.

I would say the sale of new PCs are down. As well as home built PCs. Perhaps people are using old XP discs from previous installs or switching to Linux.

It's a pretty big assumption to make from two isolated sets of data that everyone moving off XP is also moving off IE at the same time.

There's little compelling reason for an average user to care about the latest version of IE (either they get it on a new machine or Windows Update pushes it on them, but they're unlikely to go out of their way for it), and likewise, people using alternatives aren't going to change their preference because they upgraded to Win7.

Trends on IE version might be a little more enlightening, but in the absence of that, it's much more sensible to assume that the steady growth of Chrome since its release and the steady growth of Win7 since its release (each at the cost of the previous market leaders) aren't directly related.

The statistics in the OP would seem to point to the theroy of reduced PC purchases but I can't seem to come up with the correct search on the internet to find any report for new computer purchases.  I don't know how you would could up with the number of home builts other than OS purchases.