TOKYO, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Sony Corp. said Tuesday it will recall some 90,000 lithium-ion battery packs it made for its Vaio laptop computers in Japan and China for potential risks of overheating.

Sony will recall 60,000 batteries from Japan and 30,000 from China. The batteries being recalled were used in 12 Vaio models, the company said. The replacement program will be published on Nov.7 on Sony's website.

A series of recalls regarding Sony-made laptop batteries since August have put the number on the recall lists to some 8 million, Kyodo News said.

On Aug. 14, Dell Inc. said it would recall 4.1 million Sony-made batteries for laptop computers due to fire hazard, followed by a number of recall announcements made by Apple Computer Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., International Business Machines Corp., Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd. and Sharp Corp.

Sony has said some of its lithium-ion batteries can on rare occasions overheat and short-circuit as metal shards came to be mixed in them during production.

There have been nine reports of overheating, two reports of people receiving minor burn injuries, and seven other reports of minor property damage caused by batteries in Apple laptops.

Sony, the first to introduce lithium-ion batteries to the world in 1991, is now the No.2 global lithium-ion battery maker after Sanyo Electric Co.

Analysts said that the massive recall could hurt Sony's branding power and plague its revival plan. Enditem