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Alan Lenton: More battery recalls

Posted by: Alan Lenton on 03 November 2006
[3-10-2006] Sony's woes continue to make the news.
This week Gateway announced that it was planning to replace 35,000 Sony batteries. I've lost count of the total number of recalls announced by laptop manufacturers, but it runs into millions. In any case, in the middle of the week Sony announced a global recall of all the batteries affected - 9.6 million of them. I suspect that this was an attempt to take one final hit in publicity terms, as much as anything else.

In the meantime the first report of an injury came in, with a Fujitsu worker receiving minor burns. Ironically he was involved in replacing a Sony battery in a user's Fujitsu laptop as part of Fujitsu's battery replacement program when it went off!

But it's not just bad publicity that these batteries are causing Sony. The financial cost has already driven Sony into the red. It has just reported a second quarter operating loss of US$175 million, and I suspect things will be even worse next quarter. Lets hope no one else gets hurt by these defective batteries.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10/24/gateway_laptop_battery_recall/
http://www.physorg.com/news81174016.html
http://www.physorg.com/news81101508.html