“CANADIANS love a great comeback,” said adverts run by BlackBerry prior to its launch on September 24th of the Passport, the firm's latest smartphone. The phonemaker hopes that the device, featuring a striking QWERTY keyboard, will turn its ailing fortunes around (see picture). But the firm's financial results, released just two days later on September 26th, confirmed that the Canadian firm is still far from financial health.

BlackBerry, which once dominated the smartphone industry, now accounts for less than 1% of sales worldwide. As a result, the firm is haemorrhaging money. Analysts say that the only good thing that can be said about the firm's $207m loss last quarter was that it was slightly less than expected. However, BlackBerry's cheery boss, John Chen, portrayed the firm's latest results as the first part of a comeback plan, which he hopes will see the company return to profit by 2016.

In spite of the flurry of media attention surrounding its launch, the new Passport phone is only a small part of the firm's turnaround strategy. Profit margins on handsets are now notoriously thin: Mr Chen has said in the past that he is prepared to exit that market altogether if sales prove disappointing.

Instead BlackBerry sees its future in selling more services and software to large buyers, such as governments and big companies. On the same day that it unveiled its new smartphone, BlackBerry also announced a new service called Blend, which will allow users using different operating systems to see messaging and content on all their devices. This is part of a broader attempt by BlackBerry to develop new products that appeal to employers who want their workers to be able to access all their e-mail accounts on the same device. The company is also trying to make itself the one-stop shop for security-conscious businesses, building on its encrypted messaging service with the planned acquisition of Secusmart, a German firm that specialises in voice and text encryption.

The launch of the Passport phone is still useful for the boosting the chances that the firm's turnaround strategy will be a success, however. It reminds existing and potential customers that the company is still alive. And it also gave Mr Chen a public platform to compare the robust-looking Passport favourably to the problems affecting Apple’s new iPhone 6, which some users say bends under pressure. But if sales rather than rigidity is used as the measure of success, Apple would be the clear winner: it managed to sell 10m of its new iPhones in the first three days after it was launched.

Mr Chen still has time yet to turn the company around. BlackBerry has enough cash and investments in hand to fund its losses for at least the next few years. But unless the firm's new ventures in software and messaging services start to make serious money, its financial position will continue to look extremely bleak.