The source for this story puts IE6 at 10-12% in North America and Europe and 20-35% in South America, Africa, and Asia.
Whether or not IE6 support is still necessary depends on who your target audience is. Are you targeting a young and tech-savvy crowd? Then drop it. But if you're working on a project intended to be used by non-profits and government agencies (as I am right now) then it's unfortunately still necessary.
Our target audience is primarily NGOs and organisations working with poverty in developing countries. IE 6 last month was 17%. IE(5/6/7/8) was 40% and Firefox/Netscape total was 34%.
Yeah, this is just part of the long trend of IE7 users upgrading to IE8. The real test will be how much market share Chrome will gain, and how it will impact Firefox vs. IE.
But the good news is that we should be under 10% for IE6 some time next year. That has me even more excited!