SONY SHARES saw a whopping four per cent drop yesterday, settling at their lowest price for almost three years, after the firm announced it would have to recall hundreds of thousands of fire risk laptops.

The American recall of some 73,000 Vaio laptops we reported on yesterday extends to some 438,000 units worlworld. These could potentially seriously overheat and burn users had something of an inflammatory effect on the firm’s share prices, which sunk to 3,880 yen ($35.9) last night.

It is not the first time Sony has had its fingers burned, several times in the past few years the company has had to recall laptop batteries due to overheating and fire risks.

But Sony reckons the recalls won’t seriously impact its earnings, despite what all the analysts think, and has today unveiled three new computer models which it hopes will not explode into flames. µ