Sony Apologizes for Battery Recall

Sony Corporate Executive Officer Yutaka Nakagawa, center, is swarmed by reporters during a news conference on its laptop batteries at a Tokyo hotel, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006. Sony executives apologized Tuesday for inconvenience caused by a massive global recall in laptop batteries, but said the problems were now fixed and that none of the company's top leaders would resign over the recall. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye) (Itsuo Inouye - AP)

Sony has maintained that the short-circuiting happens only very rarely and only in certain ways that the battery is connected in a system with laptop models, or if the laptop is used improperly and gets bumped around.

Sony officials said Tuesday that only one overheating problem was confirmed among 3.5 million batteries, although they declined to comment on problems reported by other laptop makers.

They said the batteries are safe and the replacement program is for putting consumer worries at rest.

"This is not a safety issue," said Naofumi Hara, a Sony spokesman. "This is about addressing people's concerns which have become a social problem, and we made the managerial decision that the recall was necessary."

But laptop makers, including Dell Inc., have blamed Sony batteries, and Japanese rival Toshiba Corp. has said it may sue Sony for compensation for damage to its brand image.

Toshiba raised the number of recalled Sony batteries Tuesday to 870,000, instead of the 830,000 announced last month.

"We want to put this behind us," Nakagawa said. "I take this problem seriously and I want to finish the replacement program as quickly as possible for the sake of our users and corporate customers."

Overnight a voluntary recall of 340,000 laptop batteries made by Sony Corp. was announced in the United States. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the government's consumer-watchdog agency, issued the formal recall notice for U.S. consumers.

The batteries, some of them in the Vaio brand laptop computers manufactured by Sony, could catch fire, the CPSC said.

Sony is replacing the batteries free of charge in the recall that is affecting almost every major laptop manufacturer in the world, including Dell Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Lenovo Group, Toshiba Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd.

The replacement program, which Sony started last month after major computer makers announced recalls of Sony-made batteries, will cover about 3.5 million units excluding batteries previously recalled by Dell, Apple and Lenovo, Sony said in a statement.

About 9.6 million batteries will be recalled worldwide, including the estimated numbers for those three companies, the statement said, leaving unchanged a projection Sony made last Thursday.

Sony also left unchanged its estimate that the lithium-ion battery recalls will boost its costs by 51 billion yen ($427 million) in the July-September period. Sony's statement such costs may grow.

Sony shares, which have dipped by about 40 percent over the last five years, gained 1.3 percent to close at 4,830 yen ($40) in Tokyo.