The popularity of Delphi is on the rise, according to the TIOBE index. This is a far-from-scientific way to measure programming languages popularity using Internet sources. Although I don't think its absolute values are correct (with some languages devalued compared to the actual "business" usage, and other overvalued because they are more used in open source and web projects), it is certainly a good way to capture some trends. The fact that Delphi has been gaining over the last year, after a couple of bad years, can be seen by many indicators.

This is the The Delphi graph (I hope they don't mind I'm referring to their site, copyright/usage rules are far from clear):

In the final part of the page they have a few comments, reported here with my further observations:

• "There is a continuous flow of new scripting languages. In 2006, Ruby entered the main scene, followed this year by Lua": I have to say I was expecting Ruby to have a higher rate, after all the buzz about it, and I have to admit I had not heard of Lua before...
• "I thought C# and D would become the winners and Perl and Delphi the losers... the forecasts for D and Delphi were completely wrong... Delphi reclaimed a top 10 position...": Great!
• "C++ will get an extra push down because Microsoft is not actively supporting the language anymore." I strongly disagree. Microsoft is putting a renewed effort in C++ (the compiler is learning new tricks) and MFC (with many new user interface components). This means CodeGear is not alone in saying that Win32 native development is far from dead... but also that Delphi and the VCL need to match the new Visual C++ features.