Mark Bridge writes:

It was a relatively quiet time for tech news last week, with many companies taking a day off to celebrate Thanksgiving in the USA and then planning for a present-buying retail frenzy on ‘Black Friday’. Today the focus on Christmas shopping moves online; a day that’s called either ‘Cyber Monday’ or ‘Mega Monday’ if you work for a news organisation.

Yet it wasn’t an entirely newsless week.

This week's headline-grabbing product launch is the Motorola Moto G, which promises a decent Android smartphone at a very attractive price.

We also discuss new rules about mobile phones on planes, a new campaign to ban hands-free calls in cars, falling SMS revenue, mobile wallets and BlackBerry's $1 million investment.

The past few days have been a good time for launches. Twitter has floated on the stock exchange, Kazam has revealed its smartphone range and EE has created a tariff with a million gigabytes of mobile data.

On the other side of the coin, Acer's CEO is quitting, Vodafone UK has missed its 3G coverage target and hackers can take control of your handset's camera to ascertain PIN codes.

It looks like BlackBerry is safe for the moment... but not with the takeover many had expected.

Meanwhile Google launches the Nexus 5, Nortel's patents are sent into battle, EE promises ever-faster 4G, the FAA allows electronic devices to be used throughout flights and we celebrate a record quarter for smartphone shipments.

Mark Bridge writes:

The Rockstar Consortium. That name sounds as though it could be promising more than it can deliver, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s not. It’s the group of mobile companies that picked up Nortel’s portfolio of several thousand tech patents for $4.5 billion. And now, its members – including Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony – have set some of those patents on their biggest competitors.