Malfunctioning iPod Nano sparks safety probe in Japan

Apple's popular iPod nano media player in Japan overheated and gave off sparks, prompting a safety investigation, Japan's trade ministry said Tuesday. The malfunctioning iPod Nano is the latest in a list of dangerous incidents involving consumer products.

The incidence that occurred on January 8 in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo involved the MA099J/A iPod nano model that shot out sparks while being its lithium-ion battery was charging.

"The battery part of the product overheated while being charged and sparked," the ministry said.

Details of the incidence were passed on to the ministry by Apple on March 7, two months after the occurrence of incidence.

Although no-one was hurt, the ministry has instructed Apple to investigate the cause of the incident and checking whether there had been similar cases. However, the iPod maker has publicly warned that iPod, iPod nano or iPod shuffle may generate excess heat while being charged in certain carry cases.

Apple has shipped about 420,500 units of the iPod Nano model in question to Japan between September 2005 and September 200. But, the ministry said it has no information about how many of them were sold and how many might still be on store shelves.

Lithium ion batteries are common in consumer electronics, such as mobile telephones and personal computers. Apple too uses lithium ion batteries for iPods, the midrange version of the iPod family.

Over the past five years, lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for a series of blazes in laptop computers.

Some major notebook manufacturers like Dell, Apple, Acer and Toshiba between 2006 and 2007 were forced to recall notebooks using Sony-made Lithium-ion batteries after it came to light that a flaw in Sony's manufacturing process could lead to short circuits, sparks or fire.

Apple has sold 110 million iPod devices since their launch in 2001, surpassing Sony Corp's Walkman as the king of portable music players.

The first iPod was introduced in November 2001 with a storage capacity of 5GB initially, which over the years, has developed and grown to proffer a tremendous capacity of 80GB. The enhancement and addition of more features in the iPod was a proof of its continuous market demand. iPod was proved to be a ground-breaking product in the music industry, music lovers all over the world cannot imagine how life would have been without iPod and its products.