DELL, the world’s biggest PC maker, recalled more than four million laptop batteries last night amid growing fears that the power packs could explode in a ball of flame after a few minutes of use.

The recall is so large that the US Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a warning and said that the recall was the biggest in the history of the consumer electronics industry.

Dell said the lithium-ion batteries were made by Sony and were installed in notebooks sold between April 2004 and July 18 of this year.

Similar batteries are used in a host of electronic devices such as MP3 music players, DVD players and even some cameras and phones.

There are particular concerns that the batteries could cause untold damage if they explode into flames while being used on an aeroplane.

The Sony batteries had been used by many other companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Lenovo and Apple, but none of these had issued a similar recall.

The cost of the recall could exceed $300 million (£159 million), analysts estimate, although Dell refused to say how much it would cost.