Sony Battery Woes Deepen

Dell said after the recall announcement that it would keep Sony as a supplier of notebook batteries.

Ono estimated that Sony's battery business would have an operating profit margin of about 5 percent in the current business year to March. That compares with Sony's own forecast of its overall operating margin of 1.6 percent for the year.

He expected sales of 180 billion yen at Sony's battery operation in the year to March 2007, representing 2 percent of its overall revenue.

Lenovo, the world's third-largest PC maker after Dell and Hewlett-Packard Co., bought International Business Machines Corp.'s PC division in May 2005 and has continued to sell machines with IBM's ThinkPad brand.

(Additional reporting by Mayumi Negishi, Risa Maeda)