Ouch! It hurts!
Sony’s global replacement programme for potentially hazardous lithium-ion laptop battery hurts the brand badly! The recall was not only painful for Sony, but for those affected laptop makers as well.
For the record,
Dell has recalled 4.2 million Sony batteries with additional 100,000 units coming up next.
Lenovo (the company which took over IBM’s ThinkPad last year) would recall 526,000 Sony batteries.
Toshiba is recalling 830,000 Sony batteries.
Apple is recalling 1.8 million Sony batteries.
Fujitsu is the next laptop maker to recall Sony batteries.
To date, HP is the only major laptop maker which declines Sony battery-swap and so far the recall has totaled 7 million units.
Although Sony has offered to reimburse computer makers for the costs involved in the recalls, the recall is equally painful for computer makers. They have to set up a way to receive millions of faulty batteries and exchange them for millio of new batteries, thus creating logistical difficulties.
With the brand image severely damaged, it is not surprising if computers makers are likely to look hard at shifting some of their business away from Sony and giving to its 2 main rivals, Panasonic and Sanyo!
Source : AFXnews
