BlackBerry officials seem not to have learned the lessons of the past by continuing to push for their unpopular smartphones. The latest was the unveiling on Tuesday of the ultra high-end version of the Z10, which caused the share price of the embattled Waterloo, Ontario-based firm to go down below $6 at one point.

The BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9982 runs a customised version of BlackBerry 10.2 OS and is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset and has 2GB of RAM. Its 4.2-inch screen has a 768x1280 pixels resolution. The device has a 16GB inbuilt storage that could be expanded up to 64GB with a microSD card.

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The smartphone will be available globally beginning Nov 21 at Porsche Design stores, select carriers and retailers. In early December, BlackBerry will make available only 600 units of a limited Crocodile edition of the Porsche Design P'9982.

In releasing the high-end unit, BlackBerry teamed up with Porsche Design using exquisitely fashioned high-quality materials and a frame forged from finest quality stainless steel, plus a hand-wrapped genuine Italian leather back case.

For its tag price of $2,363, the phone includes BlackBerry apps such as BBM Now, BBM Video with Share Screen, BlackBerry Story Maker, Camera Time Shift mode and Priority Hub as well as apps for Porsche Design customers such as productivity, games, videos and music apps.

But the launch of the expensive phone did not allay the fears of share holders as price even dipped at one point to $5.98, although it eventually closed at $6.08 on Tuesday at Nasdaq.

The $5.98 share price is the lowest level since Sept 25, 2003.

Analyst Jack Gold said while BlackBerry shareholders don't have to fear the stocks plummeting to $2 a share, they won't either see a whole lot of investor confidence until new CEO John Chen has three to six months to put in place a turnaround plan.

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