the report is about failure return rates of common hardware, focusing on giving users hints about which brands and models to get. iinm it's based on a large e-tailer in france.

actually at the beginning of the article there is a part that explained how the numbers were concluded. using google translate, it's as quoted below.
that's the theoretical max bandwidth limit of usb 3.0. in real world, you cannot go that fast because of various reasons.