C++ is a good systems programming language. It means, C++ is well suited for creating operating systems, language runtimes etc. C++ is also a good choice for writing programs that need to interact closely with hardware. Examples are device drivers, embedded systems etc. One plus-point of C++ is that it brings OOP and generics to the realms of low-level systems programming.
Some popular software written in C++ are the Java virtual machine, MySQL database server, Adobe Photoshop (and many other Adobe products), Maya, BeOS, Google (web search engine, GFS, MapReduce, Chromium), Mozilla etc. Probably that list gives a good idea of the type of software that could be created with C++. Also see this list of C++ applications.