Battery woes flatten Sony profits

Sony has been hit by battery recalls from a number of firms

Sony's quarterly profits have tumbled by 94% after the firm recalled millions of laptop computer batteries because of a potential fire risk.

The Japanese firm has also been hit by delays to its PlayStation 3, which in Europe will not be released until next year, missing the Christmas market.

Net profit plunged to 1.7bn yen ($14m; £7.6m) between June and September, from 28.5bn yen a year earlier.

About 9.6 million of the lithium-ion batteries have been recalled.

Major laptop manufactures - including Apple, Toshiba, Hitachi and Lenovo - were affected by the recall, which Sony says it has set aside 51bn yen to deal with.

Modifications made

Earlier this week, Sony's management apologised for the problem, but said that nobody would be resigning over the issue.

It said it had found only one problem in the 350,000 batteries recalled from its own-brand laptops.

Modifications had been made to the production, design and inspection processes to prevent overheating problems in future, it added.

Sales in the quarter rose 8.3% to 1.85 trillion yen.