Acer Inc, the world's fourth largest personal computer maker, and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world's largest motherboard maker, offered reassurance yesterday that batteries used in their laptop computers were safe.
Their remarks came in the wake of Lenovo Group Ltd (
They join Dell Inc, Apple Computer Inc and Toshiba Corp who have all recalled defective Sony batteries within the last two months.
"We have done a thorough check on our batteries since the first recall announced by Dell, and we didn't use that specific Sony cell in our battery packs," said Calvin Chang (
Around 10 percent of Acer's notebook batteries are sourced from Sony, he said, refusing to say if the recent recall issues will impact its relationship with Sony.
Asustek, meanwhile, said that it does not use Sony batteries in its portable computers.
"We have our own list of suppliers that we have been working with," said Kevin Lin (
Lin declined to name the suppliers.
According to Lin, Asustek has taken extra precautions in beefing up procurement quality control as well as the research and development process.
Lenovo Taiwan said it is hard to predict how many faulty batteries are currently in circulation here.
The company told the Taipei Times last week that it did not have plans to recall batteries, when asked to comment on an incident where a laptop's battery caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport.
Asustek, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba, along with Hewlett-Packard Co, are the top five notebook sellers in Taiwan, according to researcher International Data Corp Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the snowballing reports of batteries catching fire have raised consumer eyebrows.
Kevin Hsu (
Both his laptop model and purchase timeline match the Lenovo/IBM recall profile.
"My laptop has been functioning properly so far but I will try to find out as soon as possible if it is affected," he said.
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