I thought the stats looked rather bogus. 30% is a hell of a lot of laptops.
The SquareTrade study utterly fails to provide any meaningful statistical analysis of its numbers. It finds “the average total failure rate of laptops to be 31% over 3 years”. An average can not stand on its own: to be of statistical use, it must be accompanied by at least a standard deviation of the data from which the average was taken. (A range would be helpful, too). SquareTrade’s sloppiness becomes more evident with a closer reading.
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What’s more, SquareTrade is a warranty company looking for customers to purchase insurance against exactly the topic of this study: laptops/portables breaking. This obnoxiously blatant conflict of interest is only mentioned as a tiny caveat in the Ars Technica piece. But, the damage has already been done: the study has been broadcast as fact across a multitude of tech websites.
