Sony plans Vaio battery recall

Sony's laptop battery woes continue

Sony is planning to expand its battery recall programme to the company's own line of notebooks. 

In an update to a previously posted bulletin about Sony's global battery recall, the company said that a recall for the Sony-manufactured battery packs in certain Vaio notebooks would be announced on 24 October. 

Sony is working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to decide which Vaio models will be recalled. 

The first recalls of Sony-manufactured batteries came in August, when reports of laptops catching fire prompted Dell to recall 4.1 million batteries. 

Apple soon followed suit, recalling 1.8 million batteries from its Powerbook and iBook lines. 

Sony announced a global recall of all its affected batteries on 2 October. Since that time, Toshiba has recalled 340,000 batteries, Fujitsu has recalled 287,000, and Lenovo and IBM have recalled 526,000.

The worldwide total is now believed to be more than seven million. Sony has estimated that the recalls will cost the firm a quarter of this year's expected profits.