Battery Recalls A Blow to Sony's Recovery

Yasser writes to mention the fallout from yet another Sony battery recall. Sony's stock hit a one-month low today on the news that they'd be pulling over a million batteries off the market. The recall is expected to have little impact financially, but has prompted the Japanese government into ordering Sony to look into the battery problem. From that article: "The ministry instructed the two companies to investigate the safety of Dell models Latitude, Inspiron and Precision and report on their findings by the end of August, the ministry said. Earlier this month, problems with battery cells supplied by Sony forced Dell to recall an unprecedented 4.1 million laptop batteries in the United States. "

What hasnt been a blow.....

[ConsumerOfMany]

Root Kit, PS3 price vs features, Blu Ray delays and cost, Battery recall, pretty much every comment from ken regarding the PS3. You can only go up from here right?

Re:What hasnt been a blow.....

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

To be frank I think Sony has the biggest exposure to this problem because they are the biggest kid on the block. This entire technology is flawed regardless of the manufacturer.

More troubling than it seems

[EdwinBoyd]

Whatever else you can say about Sony, their hardware is typically top notch (and almost always crippled by their software). If they're letting quality slide on the manufacturing side then they're in danger of losing their one remaining ace, the perception that "Sony makes good shit".

I'm talking about the average consumer who's unaware of rootkits, sonicstage or ejecting MMORPG users into space.

Sony joins Toyota, GM, and Ford.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a company grows to dominate its market, the company typically starts producing shoddy products. Success breeds sloth. It is human nature.

Last year, Toyota (yes, Toyota) recalled about 2 million vehicles in the USA. (Contrast that number to the 200,000 vehicles recalled by Honda.) Simultaneously Toyota has grown to become the #2 automobile company in the USA, surpassing Ford.

We already know about GM and Ford. Since achieving domination of the global market in the 1970s, these companies produced shoddy products for 15 years. By the time that they corrected course, they had already lost substantial market share.

Now, Sony joins Toyota, Ford, and GM.

side note
---------

Apparently, Panasonic will now replace Sony as "the consumer electronics giant for the masses". I never could understand why a Sony VCR (in the 1990s) cost $100 more than an identically equipped Panasonic VCR. By the 1990s, Sony had already outsourced production to Southeast Asia, but Panasonic continued to advertise -- actually, brag -- that its VCRs were still designed and built in Japan. I even saw an sticker (on the VCR at Fry's Electronics) proclaiming something like "Still Made with Quality in Japan".

Interesting

[Drakin020]

What I find interesting is that Sony said "This would not be affecting any of the Sony laptops"
Doesnt that strike anyone else as odd? Or perhaps it's just a bluff. Of all people you would think Sony laptops would be hit the hardest however no reports and Sony claims there would not be a recall.
Perhaps they take better care of there laptops than others? Not trolling just curious is all.

Re:Oh I'm sorry, Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Apple recall involved 2 minor injuries in 9 complaints ..."

Those are the ones that Apple has "confirmed" and actually admitted to. Take a look at the Apple forums, or do some Google searches and you will find that there are a whole lot more than 9 people out there that claim to have the problem.

If Apple thought for one second that there were truly only 9 complaints you can bet they wouldn't be recalling 1.8 million batteries.

Re:More troubling than it seems

[gEvil (beta)]

Obviously not teaching grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Re:Sony joins Toyota, GM, and Ford.

[Evets]

You can't say that GM and Ford have corrected their problems. I have owned several of their cars produced within the last 15 years and they have been among the worst cars I have ever owned. You can't walk into a dealership without feeling dirty for either service or sales. They actually gave me back my Mustang after having drained the brake fluid and not replacing it. I spent a year and a half disputing a rattling problem in a vehicle that they refused to acknowledge until I discovered that they actually produced an "Anti-rattling" kit. My Jaguar was a beautiful car, but had the most bizarre set of problems I've ever heard of (a door and sunroof that opened only when they were in the right mood, occasionally working headlights, etc.)

Conversely, having owned two BMWs and a Mercedes I ended up getting amazing deals on the cars, have no complaints about them, and the service departments actually performed extra work at no charge each and every visit as opposed to the good old american companies that won't even honor their posted service prices, don't do work as agreed, and pressure you into paying for more service which they may or may not accomplish, but they will certainly charge you for.

Ford and GM have business models that are inherently dishonest and produce products not designed to withstand the test of time.

But back to the subject at hand - it's not like it would have taken six months of testing to realize that the batteries are not safe. It took me less than an hour with my Inspiron to realize that the laptop could not spend a lot of time on my own lap. Complaints about the powerbook batteries started popping up almost immediately when they were first released. The forecasting of a recall I'm sure was made early on.

It's certainly par for the course that a company who attains significant market share begins to produce less than quality products - but that doesn't mean everybody does.

What happened in this case, I'm sure, is that production could not be slowed because demand was too high. Stopping production meant a reduction in revenue and stock price. They made a conscious decision to produce bad products knowing that the financial ramifications of a recall would be less than the financial ramifications of a production stoppage. A stoppage would not only have immediate impact as far as revenue and stock price, it also would have heavily motivated competitors to attack their clients with potentially better quality products. Dell and Apple would have claimed, rightfully, breach of contract and significantly reduced marketshare overnight.

Re:Oh I'm sorry, Sony - (Not significant??)

[lcsjk]

Let's say you are working with deadly chemicals and the laptop you are using for data storage suddenly explodes, kills your best friend and gives you severe burns, blindness and scars for the rest of your life and the chemical plant is destroyed by the resulting fire. Will you then be willing to say that that Sony had no reason to be alarmed just because no one was hurt badly by the first few incidents?

Safety is not a matter of "It is not important because it happened to someone far away." The potential loss from lawsuits is far greater than the cost of a battery recall, especially since there is a picture or video of a laptop burning.