Sony apologises for global recall of laptop batteries

TOKYO: Sony executives apologised on Tuesday for a global recall in laptop batteries, acknowledging that the troubles had caused worries and inconvenience to consumers.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment company said improvements in production, design and inspection have been made to prevent a recurrence of laptop overheating problems, which company officials said were caused by microscopic metal particles that mistakenly got inside the battery, causing short-circuiting.

“We would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the worries,” Sony executive officer Yutaka Nakagawa said, bowing slightly with two other executives at a news conference at a Tokyo hotel.

The executives were seated while they bowed and did not bow deeply standing as most Japanese executives generally do in public apologies for troubles at their companies, underlining how Sony has been reluctant to admit fault in the troubles with its laptop batteries.

Sony said last week that about 9.6m lithium-ion batteries are being recalled worldwide after reports of some computers using the Sony battery packs overheating and bursting into flames.

Overnight a voluntary recall of 3,40,000 laptop batteries made by Sony was announced in the US. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the government’s consumer-watchdog agency, issued the formal recall notice for US 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, Apple Computer, Lenovo Group, Toshiba and Fujitsu.

The CPSC said computers made by Gateway were also affected but would not specify a number.