Vodafone no-go on BlackBerry 10

Despite BlackBerry's Australian managing director, Matthew Ball, being an ex-Vodafone executive, Vodafone has today confirmed that it has no plans to launch any new BlackBerry 10 devices in Australia.

Overnight, Research in Motion changed its name to BlackBerry and announced two new devices for the BlackBerry 10 platform--the touch-screen BlackBerry Z10 and the traditional keyboard-included BlackBerry Q10.

At the local launch in Sydney this morning, Ball told journalists that Telstra and Optus would be offering BlackBerry 10 devices sometime in March, well after the launch in the UK. While Vodafone's global brand will be offering BlackBerry 10, it won't be offered in Australia.

"Globally, we'll be launching with Vodafone," Ball said. "Within the Australian market, we have shown and demonstrated BlackBerry 10 to the Vodafone team here locally. Their response was that they liked it, but need to refocus on other priorities at the moment."

Vodafone Australia told ZDNet that it would continue to work with BlackBerry, but had no immediate plans to make any BlackBerry 10 devices available. Ball said that once the product is released on other carriers, he believes its success will encourage Vodafone to sign up.

"I would suggest that once they're starting to see the success coming out of the other operators, I would suggest they would likely come on board."

Ball said that in Australia, approximately two-thirds of BlackBerry's customer base are enterprise or business customers. The launch of BlackBerry 10 is designed to win over more of the consumer market, he said, and believed that the ideal ratio would be 55 percent business and 45 percent consumer customers.