When BlackBerry held its BlackBerry 10 launch event in NYC many people were wondering why BlackBerry was launching its first BlackBerry 10 smartphones in the UK immediately, with a U.S launch scheduled some time in March. Well, here's why.

BlackBerry knows it needs BlackBerry 10, the Z10 and the Q10 to be successful for BlackBerry to exist as a company. The smartphone maker has watched its market share drop dramatically over the last few years as Apple's iOS and Google's Android began to surpass BlackBerry in smartphone market share. In the U.S. BlackBerry has a current market share of 2 percent in the U.S. while Apple is at 25 percent. However, things are more favorable in the UK for BlackBerry, where it has a 12 percent market share versus Apple's 25 percent.

At the UK launch of BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry senior VP Andrew Bocking backed up that point by saying:

"The U.K. has been a key market for us for so long. We have over 8 million BlackBerry users today in the U.K. and we are very excited for them to be on the leading edge getting access to BB10 on the Z10."

BlackBerry is launching its first smartphones where it currently sees the most success and that is in the UK. If BlackBerry 10 is well received in the UK, it could have a greater impact in countries where the owners of UK carriers are present, than in the U.S. where carriers are self-contained.

Analysts are also surprised to see a major flagship smartphone get announced and be in UK stores the following day. It appears that carriers in the UK showed more initial support to BlackBerry than the carriers in the U.S. It will be interesting to see if BlackBerry 10 is a success in the UK and if that even translates in to how the U.S. reacts to BlackBerry's do-or-die smartphones.