John Chen was grounded by a typhoon in Hong Kong but he laughs when asked whether BlackBerry is facing similar storms.

“It’s still 80:20,” BlackBerry’s chief executive says about his chances of turning round the smartphone company. (In March he rated his chances at just 50:50) “I am actually feeling better than that now but I never use 100:0 as that would jinx us. But we are definitely out of danger.”

Mr Chen laughs a lot. You would imagine it helps to do so, given the tumultuous time that he joined the Canadian technology group as chief executive. It was last autumn and the company had just failed to sell itself. From an icon feted by rap stars, lawyers and US presidents, BlackBerry had become the company that appointed singer Alicia Keys – an avid iPhone user – as its creative director.