The big three (GE, Osram Sylvania and Philips), as far as I know conducts a real lab test using statistically significant number of lamps to calculate life time on incandescent, HIDs and fluorescent to get the average lifetime, which is defined as the hours at which 1/2 of the large sample of lamps fail.
Most of LEDs claim the standard lifetime of "100,000 hours(11.42 years) " but we all know the newer LEDs haven't even been around for 10 years, so how do they know?
oops wrong section.. mods, could you move it to the LED forum?