We are not going down, says BlackBerry's Sunil Lalvani

So is BlackBerry down and out? Not at all, if Sunil Lalvani, its Managing Director for the crucial India operations is to be believed.

"We are here to stay. We have $2 billion in cash reserves and zero debt. We are not going down financially," Lalvani clarified at the launch of the company's new smart phone, the Z30, in New Delhi on Thursday. The company has priced its first 5-inch phone very aggressively at Rs 39,990.

"Our backbone is the network that we have built over the years. A good indicator was the launch of the BBM app for iOS and Android earlier this week. We clocked 10 million* downloads in 24 hours. That is not the sign of a company going away," said a confident Lalvani. Incidentally, BlackBerry had to pause the rollout of its popular BBM app to other platforms for a few weeks after the Android version of the app was leaked hours before.

As reported by Business Today earlier, the company is hoping to cash in on the adoption of BBM by introducing a monetized BBM channel for brands in the near future. 

Lalvani claimed the company's enterprise business was also strengthening its position with the launch of the BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10) earlier this year. "We have 25,000 active servers across the globe and grew 25 per cent in the period from July to August 2013," he added.

On the recent reports about Prem Watsa's Fairfax Finacial Holdings trying to gain majority control of the company, Lalvani elaborated: "We are focused on a business as usual approach and had sent out a communique to this effect to clients and customers last week." "You can continue to count on BlackBerry. We are here for the long haul," he said, reassuring BlackBerry clients and users.

(*An earlier version of this copy had incorrectly mentioned the figure at 1 million. It has now been corrected to 10 million.)