Sony was completely to blame for the flaming battery fiasco, according to Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, who has been virulently defending his company’s role in the affair. 

He has defended Dell's manufacturing process for notebooks, saying this played no part in his company being forced to recall more than four million Sony-manufactured batteries - the largest ever US battery recall. Apple also had to recall 1.4m batteries.

"We know exactly why there was a problem," Dell said in an interview with ZDNet .

"Sony had contaminated its cells in the manufacturing process. The batteries were contaminated and were no good no matter what you did with them. We know the batteries under rare circumstances catch fire [which is why we recalled them]."

Sony has already claimed that the way Dell manufactures notebooks, compared to other PC makers, was also part of the problem. A spokesperson said that the same batteries are used in Sony Vaios and have not exploded so the problem must also lie with Dell’s system configuration process.

Sony has agreed to financially help both Dell and Apple fund the cost of replacements but the blame game looks set to run for some time yet.