Research in Motion released its newest BlackBerry smartphone to the Canadian market, the P'9981 Porsche Design BlackBerry, a highly refined and luxurious product that the company is banking on to carve itself a new niche in the smartphone market it once dominated.

The new smartphone is absolutely gorgeous to look at, with a stainless steel frame, genuine leather backing, and accentuated QWERTY keyboard, giving it the distinctive Porsche Design style made famous by the automaker, and since incorporated into several other jointly designed products since 1972, including eyewear, luggage, accessories, and timepieces.

"Porsche Design has been a symbol for Iconic Style since 1972. And this smartphone is a milestone product for Porsche Design," said Dr. Juergen Gessler, CEO of the Porsche Design Group in Stuttgart, Germany. "It is a representation of the iconic Porsche Design styling philosophy and RIM's technology-driven focus, which combine to deliver engineered luxury and powered performance in a smartphone for the discerning consumer."

The P'9981 is powered by a 1.2 Ghz processor, 8 GB of memory (expandable to 40 GB with a micro SD card), 720p full HD video recording, a 5 megapixel camera, and Liquid Graphics technology powering the 2.8" touchscreen, making for a fluid experience.

On the software side, the P'9981 features BlackBerry's newest OS, 7.0, a customized Wikitude World Browser which uses location based tracking to supply you with information about your surroundings, a Porsche Design U.I, and several included apps and programs, including BlackBerry Messenger, which helped drive the company to its early smartphone success, and Social Feeds. Facebook, foursquare, and Twitter are also included.

The real question is whether the luxury product will find the audience that RIM is banking on, namely the corporate crowd that it once enslaved.  In Canada, the device is currently only available at the Porsche Design store in Toronto, and retails for a princely $1,899. That's a vast sum for a smartphone that comes with modest hardware, though BlackBerry's have always been more revered for their security and function, rather than their power. Now RIM is hoping they can add style and luxury to the keywords associated with the BlackBerry name.

The P'9981 Porsche Design BlackBerry has been available for several months in the U.K and U.S, and through various online retailers.