May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. has developed a new solar battery that doesn't use silicon, allowing it to reduce product costs by as much as a fifth, the Nikkei newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information.

Sony hasn't decided whether it will commercialize the product, the report said. The battery's sensitized solar cells have an energy-conversion efficiency of 10 percent, which is said to a practical application standard, Nikkei said.

The market for non-silicon solar batteries could amount to 500 billion yen ($4.8 billion) in size by 2010, the paper said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kosuke Goto in Tokyo at kgoto2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 24, 2008 20:27 EDT