There's problems with all three of your statements:
1. IE on XP isn't getting any better, it's stuck at IE8. I'm sure people in Redmond are as desperate for people to upgrade from XP as we all were for people to upgrade from IE6, but as we've experienced, wishing and hoping aren't enough. Last I heard XP was 60% of Firefox base, and if you assume they are older machines, it makes sense that they also have an incentive to use the fastest browsers to wring the most out of their machines. If all they do is browse then it makes much better financial sense, and the alternative browser probably clears up a bunch of security problems too.
2. IE isn't the default browser in Europe, which is a market that's bigger that the U.S. New users get prompted to choose from a short list, which includes Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera. In many other countries IE isn't as dominant due to language or cultural issues. In the UK and US which are traditionally strong for IE, Safari on Mac is also strong which makes up for weaker showings by Firefox and Chrome and that's a growing and influential market that Microsoft has conceded entirely. Only China and South Korea are really IE strongholds and South Korea now has something like 15% Android thanks to an explosion of mobile browsing and being the home country of Samsung and LG (mobile being another growing and influential market that Microsoft seems totally out of the running for).
3. If people really are that lazy then a) it prevents them upgrading XP, b) it prevents them switching back to IE if previously switched to (the auto-updating) Chrome and Firefox, and similarly switching from Android and iPhone in mobile..
1. IE on XP isn't getting any better, it's stuck at IE8. I'm sure people in Redmond are as desperate for people to upgrade from XP as we all were for people to upgrade from IE6, but as we've experienced, wishing and hoping aren't enough. Last I heard XP was 60% of Firefox base, and if you assume they are older machines, it makes sense that they also have an incentive to use the fastest browsers to wring the most out of their machines. If all they do is browse then it makes much better financial sense, and the alternative browser probably clears up a bunch of security problems too.
2. IE isn't the default browser in Europe, which is a market that's bigger that the U.S. New users get prompted to choose from a short list, which includes Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera. In many other countries IE isn't as dominant due to language or cultural issues. In the UK and US which are traditionally strong for IE, Safari on Mac is also strong which makes up for weaker showings by Firefox and Chrome and that's a growing and influential market that Microsoft has conceded entirely. Only China and South Korea are really IE strongholds and South Korea now has something like 15% Android thanks to an explosion of mobile browsing and being the home country of Samsung and LG (mobile being another growing and influential market that Microsoft seems totally out of the running for).
3. If people really are that lazy then a) it prevents them upgrading XP, b) it prevents them switching back to IE if previously switched to (the auto-updating) Chrome and Firefox, and similarly switching from Android and iPhone in mobile..