In the face of pressure from shareholders and general market criticism about its performance in the face of iOS and Android's rise, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was keen to stress his company's good numbers at the BlackBerry Developers Conference in San Francisco.

"Since last year, we've had 40 percent increase in subscribers to 70 million, we've sold 165 million smartphones, and have 50 million BBM users - that's up almost 50 percent in a year," he said.

"BlackBerry 7 has been the biggest, most successful launch for us ever."

Apps on the rise

As part of this activity, there have been 25 million donloads of the around 200 BBM Connected apps since they launched a couple of months ago

This performance is also reflected in the usage of BlackBerry App World, which is available in 130 countries, supports 26 currencies, carrier billing with 16 operators, accumulating one billion downloads in June, now at the rate of five million downloads per day.

Alec Saunders, VP developer relations, stated "App World is the second most profitable app store ahead of Android Market".

Lazaridis was also keen to point out how people using newer BlackBerry devices are much more active.

"BlackBerry 7 smartphones generate 11 times higher grossing app ARPU than BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 5 devices," he said.

Lazaridis also quoted the somewhat unclear figures from German research outfit reseach2guidance which states that an average BlackBerry app is downloaded 43 percent more than an iOS app and 48 percent more than an Android app.