2% of all laptops sold every year are stolen from airports?

Interesting analogy from NetworkWorld on rising rates of laptop loss, but it works! Apparently laptop loss is giving IHOP a run for its money. From the article...

"Some of the largest and medium-sized U.S. airports report close to 637,000 laptops lost each year, according to the Ponemon Institute survey released Monday. Laptops are most commonly lost at security checkpoints, according to the survey."

Over 630K laptops lost each year just within airports! From IDC's Quarterly PC tracker (Dec 2007) we see that over 31M laptops were projected to be sold in 2007. This means that over 2% of all laptops sold in the US were lost or stolen from airports!

Hard to believe. Am I exaggerating or is this for real? Makes me think about how cold boot can be a weapon of choice for criminals to gain access to sensitive data.