All those who purchased Pocket PC e740 bearing the serial numbers 7201464L through 92041620L are being asked to contact Toshiba directly to organise to have the units repaired or replaced.
The fault affects the unit's back-up battery, which is designed to prevent loss of unsaved data when the main battery runs out of power or is removed. The company has identified what it is describing as a "minor defect" in the circuit board of some units which prevents recharging of the back-up battery.
According to Ralph Stadus, General Manager of Toshiba's Information Systems Division for Australia and New Zealand, the defect was detected in early October, by which time roughly 20,000 faulty units had been sold globally, a sizable portion of which were sold into the Australian market.
While Stadus concedes the recall will be costly for the company, he believes it will ultimately prove beneficial by bringing consumer's attention to an aspect of the product they may not have been aware of initially.
"Our biggest challenge in terms of recalling the unit will be customer apathy, if consumers synchronise their machines with their PC on a regular basis, which most of our customers do, they are unlikely ever to experience a problem," Stadus said. "The recall will point a lot of our customers to features in the e740 that are not available in other products, because the fault has occurred in an added feature which prevents data loss."
Stadus says that while the cost of the recall will be substantial, it will not impact on the company's bottom line.
"The fault is fairly easily repaired, so the total costs won't be material in terms of our overall business," Stadus said.
Toshiba is asking Australian consumers who own a Pocket PC e740 bearing the serial numbers 7201464L through 92041620L to contact the company's tech support number: 1800 021 100.
