Rember the article of the Dell laptop bursting into flames in the Japanese conference? Then there were 2 to 3 more such cases happening randomly around the world. That caused Dell to recall their battery last month. Millions of affected units were shipped back to Dell for battery exchange. But who do you think should be blamed?
Now, Dell is pointing their fingers to Sony, for causing the mishaps and the blow-ups. Chairman Michael Dell says that it has no part in the blame for the faulty batteries and says that all of the blame falls on Sony. At a conference in New York, Dell told ZDnet, “We know exactly why there was a problem. Sony had contaminated its cells in the manufacturing process. The batteries were contaminated and were no good no matter what you did with them,” Dell said. “We know the batteries, under rare circumstances, catch fire, (which is why we recalled them).”
Sony on the other hand does not want to be blamed fully for the battery recalls. A representitive from Sony counter argued, “It is the configuration. We use the same batteries in our Vaios, and have our own safeguards against potential overheating. Other manufacturers which use the same cells haven’t come forward with any issues. On rare occasions, a short circuit can occur, but this is affected by systems configurations found in different laptops.”
The question of “Who’s at fault?” is still there. Neither of the 2 IT giants wants to fully admit their faults. However, neither of them should admit their faults totally. On Sony’s part, they were entrusted with the responsibility that the batteries are functionable without any flaw. (which of course they failed to do so, in this case) On the other hand, Dell should have tested and re-tested their machines before shipping it over to the consumers. Although the accidents rarely occur, you still cannot lift the blame on Dell for not certifying the safety of their laptops.
Sony is currently helping Dell settle the fundings for the battery recall. Will we see the end of Dell-Sony relationship in Dell’s huge computer assembly plan? It’s too early to say but there’s no doubt that Dell will still stick to Sony. This is due to the fact that Sony supplies batteries to many other computer vendors out there. Only Dell was unfortunate to have such experiences.
