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Sony has been forced to undertake a massive global recall of 440,000 Vaio laptops because the computers can overheat and have caused a series of burning incidents around the world. The recall will involve Sony, which is battling to restore consumer confidence in its brands, offering free repairs to the laptops in 48 countries where the Vaio is sold. But the recall comes amid suggestions that the company knew about the problem for a year and lingered too long before ordering the recall. Reports in Japan suggest that the company knew about the problem when complaints began to surface in August 2007, but did not report it to the relevant Japanese ministry until last month. Sony told reporters in Tokyo that it had taken time to find the cause of the problems and establish what repairs were required.

Although the financial impact of the recall is expected by the company to be “greater than zero, but not a major impact”, it deals a heavy reputational blow to the iconic Japanese technology firm. The company has been struggling to recover its old dominance of consumer electronics but remains under constant attack from the likes of Samsung and Apple. Sony is still licking its wounds from a giant recall of 10 million lithium ion batteries two years ago – an incident that cost the company $430 million and temporarily derailed the efforts of Sony’s president, Sir Howard Stringer, to restore the company’s group-wide profit margins to five per cent.

Source: Times

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