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NTT Docomo to Replace Battery in 840,000 NEC Phones
Wed January 29, 2003 04:30 AM ET

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo said on Wednesday it would replace the battery packs in about 840,000 camera-equipped mobile phones made by NEC Corp. due to a glitch that caused handsets to overheat.

The move, affecting the hot-selling "N504iS" model, is the biggest-ever replacement or recall by DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile phone operator.

DoCoMo and NEC are still estimating the cost of the replacement program and are discussing how it will be split, a DoCoMo official told a news conference.

DoCoMo, Japan's No.2 provider of photo-taking phones, said eight instances of overheating had been reported since the model was launched in late November -- one case for every 100,000 units sold. The model is one of DoCoMo's 10 camera-equipped phones.

DoCoMo will mail new battery packs to all users starting in mid-February. It will suspend new sales of the N504iS until all existing handsets are replaced, probably by the end of March.

An NEC spokeswoman said the impact of the replacement program was not yet known as it was still investigating the problem.

DoCoMo said the problem was caused by a hardware conflict between the battery pack and handset, which in some cases reached temperatures of up to 212 Fahrenheit.

The model is more prone to overheating due to its thinness -- just 0.8 inch, an official said.

DoCoMo has reeled in more than five million users for its photo-taking handsets in just over seven months since the launch of its camera phones.

There were about 15 million camera-phone users in Japan as of the end of December.

Shares in DoCoMo ended down 0.43 percent at 233,000 yen before the news. NEC shares lost 6.22 percent to 437 yen, in line with sharp falls in the high-tech sector.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=2130038

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