A lot of companies will continue using Windows XP until hardware makers like printers, scanners, video cards no longer support XP, and used XP compatible hardware which work with Windows XP is harder to find. It might take 3-5 years or longer since there are some public computers which still use Windows 2000 now since it works, and is good enough for some tasks.
A lot of companies can't afford to upgrade all their hundreds or thousands of computers to Windows 7 and 8 since the Windows install CD and license key for 7 cost hundreds of dollars to buy for the professionel and Ultimate version of 7. Plus, a lot of older printers, scanners, fax machines, video cards, and other hardware don't work in 7 or 8.
The same goes for software made in the XP era (2001-2008). A lot of older XP software do not work in 7, or run really slow because it was made for XP.
Windows XP is also very stable in my experience if you know how to properly maintain your PC by defragging the hard drive, checking for errors on disk, keeping it updated and scanning your hard drive for viruses on a weekly basis. A lot of companies are also afraid 7 and 8 is less stable then XP since 7 and 8 are younger, and don't have the 10+ years of reliabilit which XP has since 7 is just 2-3 years old.
Some companies like a publishing company like Newspaper don't need the more advance features of 7 for some of their workers like writers, editors, and marketing since most workers probably mostly use Microsoft Word, Outlook, and other office software which is already available and work well in XP.
