Hitachi joins others in Sony's battery recall

Japanese global company Hitachi Corp. said on Friday that it plans to recall more than 16,000 laptop battery packs manufactured by Sony Corp, which is the latest massive global recall of batteries that can overheat and catch fire.

Hitachi spokesman Masahiro Takahashi said that Flora 210W and Flora Se210 laptop personal computers, sold in the Japanese market, had the Sony battery packs installed in them.

So far the company has not received any complaint about the problems in batteries, but they are undergoing recall for the customer’s peace of mind.

The major laptop companies have warned the consumers against the use of Sony’s lithium-ion batteries, which can heat up and catch fire, and have asked the customers to return them.

On August 14, 2006, Sony and Dell admitted to major flaws in several Sony batteries that could result in the battery overheating and catching fire. As a result they recalled over 4.1 million laptop batteries in the largest computer related recall to that point in history.

Not only Dell, but even Apple computers, Toshiba and Lenovo and IBM recalled 1.8 million, 34,0000 and 52,6000 Sony laptop batteries respectively in September 2006.

On September 28, 2006, Sony announced a global battery exchange program in response to growing consumer concerns. On October 2, 2006, Hewlett-Packard determined that it is not necessary for HP to join the global battery replacement program.

According to Sony, their batteries are giving problems because during the manufacture in Japan, fragments of metals were left in the cells.

On October 3, 2006, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Sony was aware of faults in its notebook PC batteries in December 2005 but failed to fully study the problem.

In the computer market, Sony’s battery woes have been one of the major headaches of company’s trying to hold up to their reputation in the ever growing technology market.

Welsh-born Howard Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, is trying to inspect and repair the electronic operations.

With a delay in Sony’s much awaited playstation 3 video game console and having lost to rival Apple’s Ipod in portable music players, it is still a question mark if the maker of Legendry walkman will recuperate its former glory.