"presumably the continued use of XP is because of .. some rubbish software that hasnt been updated for years which requires XP "
Have you considered the possibility that some organisations have actually looked at the return on investment they would get by moving beyond XP, and decided that it isn't worthwhile for their foreseeable needs in their foreseeable future?
Y'know, the same kind of business logic that sensible organisations use when making non-IT related decisions - does this investment demonstrably help us do business cost-effectively? Or is it just an ego boost for the IT Director, his budget, and his certified Microsoft dependent team?
When's end of life for Windows XP Embedded anyway? There's no successor for that yet, as far as I know, so it seems likely that there will be continued updates for XP in one form or another for quite a while yet.