SINGAPORE, Aug 15: The recall by US computer-maker Dell of about 4.1 million laptop batteries due to safety concerns will not have any material impact on the company’s finances, founder and board chairman Michael Dell said here on Tuesday.

The world’s largest PC maker said on Monday it was recalling the batteries that could overheat and pose a fire hazard.

“We would expect that the recall will have no material impact on our finances,” Dell told reporters in Singapore after speaking at a technology forum.

Dell would not confirm estimates the recall would cost the company in excess of $300 million, but said the losses “will be a non-material amount.”

He also said the Dell company will keep Sony as its supplier of batteries for its laptops.

“We have been working very closely with Sony to understand what occurred in the process during the period of contamination and also to understand what counter-measures they have taken,” Dell said.

“We have confidence that they have taken the right counter-measures and that their process is now secure. So we expect that Sony will continue to be a good supplier of batteries for us.”

He said the move was not expected to dent consumer confidence on the Texas computer giant.

“The biggest thing we can do is to ensure the safety of our customers, and we are taking an abundance of caution here with a broad recall to ensure that customers have the best conditions possible,” said Dell, 41, who founded the company in 1984. “We know that these contaminated battery cells have an extremely small possibility of failure, but we've taken what we think is an abundance of caution.” —AFP

Our correspondent adds from

Washington: The recall is the biggest in the history of the consumer electronics industry and follows online distribution of pictures of a Dell laptop bursting into flames during a conference in Japan.

Computer experts quoted in the US media said these could be the same Sony batteries that are used by Apple in MacBook laptops.

This leads to speculation that the Apple company may also have to recall millions of batteries supplied with their notebook computers.

Dell and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission are advising consumers to stop using the recalled batteries immediately, and contact the company for replacement.

"This is a very serious concern — potential for a laptop computer overheating," said Nancy Nord of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sony, a Japanese electronic giant that made the batteries, said on Tuesday it would pay some of the costs involved in Dell’s recall.

Dell officials said the record recall of 4.1 million laptop PC batteries was prompted by six incidents of the Sony-made batteries overheating and was planned before pictures of the burning computer were posted on the Web.

Consumeraffairs.com, a US website that looks after consumer interests, said it received a complaint from a man in July who said his Dell laptop set his vintage pickup truck on fire.

"Put that same laptop on an airplane, 30,000 feet up in the air and who knows what’s going to happen," said Joe Enoch of Consumeraffairs.com.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Transportation and Safety Administration officials are so concerned about the risk of fire that they have said, "Batteries in laptops… pose a serious risk to airplanes."

It’s not just Dell batteries.

In a frightening incident in February, a UPS cargo plane at 31,000 feet caught fire, although it landed safely with no one hurt. Later, investigators determined that the fire was caused by a lithium-ion battery used in laptops.