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UPDATE: Hitachi Recalls Exploding Batteries Welcome to the party	By Alexandru Sima, Hardware Editor 6th of October 2006, 10:21 GMT Adjust text size:


Hitachi has announced a recall of 16,000 possibly hazardous batteries made by Sony for laptop computers. The recall covers only Japan, because Hitachi does not sell laptops overseas. The battery packs were installed in the company's Flora 210W and Flora Se210 laptop personal computers for the Japanese market, said Hitachi's spokesman Masahiro Takahashi. "We are joining Sony's voluntary replacement program, but we have not received any report of damage related to the battery packs in our laptop computers", announced Hitachi. The firm joins a growing list of computer makers that, altogether, have recalled over 7.5 million Sony-made batteries since mid-August. Sony said on August 25 that it would incur costs of up to $257.000.000 after big recalls by US computer makers Apple Computer and Dell due to concern that the batteries could burst into flames when overheated. Since then, its troubles have spread, with recalls by Toshiba, Lenovo and Fujitsu. Last week, Sony offered to replace all possibly defective batteries worldwide. Sony shares have lost about 15 pct of their market value since the battery scandal, reports Forbes. Sony executives were informed about a Dell notebook that caught fire in November last year, after its engineers were sent to have a look and reported the battery was prone to overheat because of the contamination with metal particles during the battery's production process, said a local (Japanese) newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun. The electronics giant learned in December that a Dell notebook computer caught fire in November and it was fitted with one of Sony's batteries, said the same newspaper. Sony then concluded that the battery was prone to overheating and that the reason for the overheating was metal particles that had contaminated the battery during the production process. The production process was corrected immediately upon discovering the problem, but Sony only examined the same type of batteries produced around the same time. Sony did not examine batteries it had produced for companies other than Dell on the ground that no accidents had been reported in other computers. Sony also did not thoroughly examine the electrical circuits and other hardware used in Dell PCs. The November incident was reported to other PC makers, telling them what the cause was and the fact that Dell had carried out a recall, but it did not request other makers to recall Sony batteries. A worldwide replacement program started the last days for all the laptop batteries that meet certain specifications, regardless of the manufacturer of the laptops. The problems extend further than initially thought and Sony refused to say how many laptop makers use the potentially faulted batteries, or how many devices have been sold. Sony also declared that its global replacement strategy is not obligatory, and it would depend on the outcome of consultations with individual computer makers.

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