Acer recalls 27,000 Sony laptop batteries

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 4/26/2007

Sony Corp. has still not seen the end of the fallout from the defectively made battery packs that set off a wave of recalls starting in the summer of 2006.

Adding fuel to the fire, Acer America Corp., in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Wednesday announced that it is conducting a voluntary recall of lithium-ion battery packs containing cells made by Sony's energy devices division and used in certain Acer notebook computers.

The recall is a precautionary measure for Acer, as the company said that none of the CPSC's 16 reports of notebook batteries overheating have involved Acer's computers. The recall affects some 27,000 units in Acer's TravelMate and Aspire lines sold in the United States and Canada from May 2004 through November 2006, the CPSC said.

More details on the recall can be found at the CPSC's Web site and Acer's own battery recall Web site.

For months now, Sony has been struggling to recover from its lithium-ion manufacturing mishaps, which triggered large-scale battery recalls over the past year at Dell Inc., Apple Inc., Lenovo Inc., and others. The company's bottom line has not been immune to the battery-related troubles. In October 2006, Sony downgraded its financial forecast for the fiscal year ended on March 31, 2007, forecasting operating profits of $422 million, down 62 percent from its July 2006 forecast. The company's net income outlook was also lowered, down 38 percent from its July forecast to $67 billion.  The company's earnings announcement for fiscal 2006 is slated for May 16.