Lenovo shares hit by battery failure
Shares of Lenovo Group, the world's third-largest personal computer maker, declined 1.66 per cent yesterday after the company confirmed an incident in which a ThinkPad T43 notebook computer equipped with a Sony battery had overheated and began smoking.
The shares closed at HK$2.96 yesterday.
The incident may continue to have a negative impact on Lenovo's share price in the near future 'because investors will wait and see whether the company will have to offer compensation or call back its products', Tung Tai Securities associate director Kenny Tang Sing-hing said.
The incident follows recalls by Lenovo's main rivals, Dell and Apple Computer, of almost six million Sony-made batteries, saying they could produce smoke and catch fire.
Lenovo, which bought IBM's personal computer business last year, yesterday said a ThinkPad T43 notebook computer with a Sony battery smoked and sparked at Los Angeles International Airport on September 16.
'Our investigative team was in Los Angeles within 12 hours of the reported incident to determine exactly what happened. There were no injuries or property damage,' Lenovo's spokesperson in Hong Kong said.
The firm said this incident was an 'extreme case of battery failure' and was very rare in its notebooks.
'No model of battery is 100 per cent immune from failures or overheating,' it said.
The Lenovo spokesman declined to comment on compensation issues or whether the company would recall notebooks of the same model from the market.
Last month, Lenovo chief executive William Amelio said the company will not recall its products that are equipped with Sony batteries because they have already passed safety tests and no overheating problem has been found.
A Sony spokesman said the company is co-operating with Lenovo in investigating the incident.
