UPDATED 12:54 EDT / AUGUST 16 2012

Live in New Mexico or Rhode Island? You’re Probably Clumsy and Broke Your iPad.

The iPhone and iPad are two of the fastest-selling products ever to grace the planet, and the number of people that can call themselves an iDevice owner is growing by the day. But as much as we love our mobile devices, these expensive gadgets are easy to break, especially if you’re one of the clumsy residents of Mississippi, New Mexico or Rhode Island.

SquareTrade, one of the largest providers of insurance for gadgets, analyzed the cases of damaged iPhones and iPads and found that people of five US states are more prone to dropped and damaged gadgets.

The data suggests that the iPhone is more likely to be damaged in Mississippi, New Mexico, Rhode Island, North Dakota, and South Carolina, with Mississippi residents being the most prone to accidentally damaging their iPhones and iPads.

The report predicts that 30 to 35 percent of iPads and iPhones in the Mississippi state will be reported damaged in the next two years. By comparison, Iowa and Montana are the safest states for those devices, with only seven percent of iPhones are damaged in Iowa and only five percent are damaged in Montana.

The year-round humidity makes these devices more prone to damage in Mississippi, as per Vince Tseng, vice president of marketing at SquareTrade.

“Heat and humidity cause people to perspire, which increase the likelihood that they will drop an iPhone (or) iPad,” Tseng said. “People in hotter climates also might be involved in more water sports, creating the increased chance of water-damaged electronics.”

In fact, mobile users host a range of funny and interesting reasons for damaging their devices.

“I dropped the iPhone in a cup in my patrol car when serving an arrest warrant on a house,” said one.

“I did some laundry last night, and this morning I realized that my phone was in the pocket of a jacket that I washed and dried,” said another.

“I spilled a cup of coffee into my purse that held my iPhone,” one woman said.

The glass screen or chassis was mentioned as a factor in 80 percent of iPhone damage claims, while about 16 percent of iPhone damages claims including falls in pools, rain damage, drops into the toilet, and coffee spills. In contrast, 20 percent of iPhone and 16 percent of iPad are likely to endure damage from drops during the first two years.

If you are unaware of how many mobile phones getting damaged each year, here’s one figure. According to Asurion, a provider of cellphone insurance and consumer technology protection services, more than 60 million smartphones and mobile devices are either lost, stolen or damaged each year globally.


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