The Hindu Business Line : Nokia detects 1 lakh sets with defective batteries

New Delhi, Aug. 17 Nokia has so far detected over one lakh mobile users in India having handsets with battery from the defective BL-5C series. The company, which had issued advisory warning to consumers of a defect in the BL-5C battery series on Tuesday, has got 20,000 calls on its helpline telephone numbers and over 12.5 lakh short messages from concerned customers.

Nokia had said that there could be defects in about 46 million handsets worldwide having BL-5C battery manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co Ltd of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006.

Nokia’s woes have, however, resulted in an increase in sales for its rival handset vendor in the country. Motorola has recorded a 7.3 per cent increase in its sales over the last few days. “While it’s too early to say if the increase in Motorola handsets has been due to the battery problems being faced by Nokia, the increase in sales over the past few days has been quite significant and not usual,” said a source close to the US-based handset vendor.

Product advisory issued

Retail chains such as Subhiksha, which is now big on selling mobile handsets, said that anxiety levels among users are high as they were not used to such advisories. “While it is too early to say Nokia handset sales have been impacted, the Indian consumers are not used to product advisory and, therefore, the anxiety levels are high,” said Mr R. Subramanian, Managing Director, Subhiksha.

According to Mr Devinder Kishore, Director, Marketing, Customer and Marketing operations, Nokia India, the impact on handset sales will be known only in a week’s time. “We have had only two working days since the advisory was announced, so it’s too early to gauge the impact on sales. But we are now focussed more on helping the affected customers in getting their batteries replaced.”

The defect came to light after about 100 mobile users across the globe complained of over heating. Nokia offered to replace the defective batteries and thousand of consumers have been thronging the 700-odd company customer care centres.

Nokia Centres

Mr Kishore, however, said that consumers can check the status by sending an SMS to 5555 “Consumers need not disrupt their life and work and come to the Nokia centres. All they need to do is to send us an SMS and if their battery is found to be in the defective batch we will courier a new one to them free of cost.”

According to analysts, the cost to replace the faulty batteries globally may be as much as $340 million.

Related Stories:
Nokia warns of battery defects in handsets

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