New blow for Sony as Toshiba recalls laptop batteries

Toshiba said today it was recalling worldwide 340,000 batteries made by Sony for its laptops, the latest in a series of embarrassing battery problems for the electronics giant.

The latest problem in the batteries causes the laptops to sometimes stop recharging or run out of power, but no injuries or other accidents have been reported, Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori said, while declining to give the number of reported problems.

The defect is not directly related to the problem behind last month’s recall of Sony batteries by Dell and Apple over concerns that the batteries could overheat and catch fire.

Dell asked customers to return 4.1 million faulty laptop batteries, while Apple Computer recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide.

In both those cases, the troubled lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony Energy Devices, a Japan-based subsidiary of Sony.

Today’s recall affected 100,000 laptop batteries in the US, 45,000 in Japan and the rest in other parts of the world, Omori said.