Tech CEO Roundup From All Things Digital

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- A host of big-tech CEOs spoke late Wednesday at the D9: All Things Digital confab, discussing many of the themes worrying tech investors.

Nokia(NOK) CEO Stephen Elop, currently under fire for cutting his firm's second-quarter sales forecast due to weak demand of Nokia phones, defended his firm's new smartphone partnership with Microsoft(MSFT) and denied a hardware takeover by the Seattle software giant.

Shares of Nokia rose 0.6% in pre-market trading on Thursday.

Meanwhile, HP(HPQ) CEO Leo Apotheker said he is open to licensing the company's WebOS operating system to other devices besides its own and also said HP won't be releasing its new TouchPad tablet for another few months.

HP acquired the WebOS platform last summer through its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm.

Shares of HP increased 0.2% to $36.69 in pre-market trading on Thursday.

Netscape co-founder-turned-venture-capitalist Marc Andreessen said at the conference he doesn't believe we've entered into a tech bubble. Andreessen's comments come amid skyrocketing valuations for several privately held tech companies like Facebook and daily deals site Groupon.

Groupon announced plans to link up with online travel company Expedia(EXPE), a deal that would allow users to book hotel rooms and airfare at a significant discount. The partnership would be similar to an alliance formed last month with concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment(LYV).

Twitter announced Wednesday the coming launch of its own photo service in the next coming weeks. The service will bring about competition to third party applications like TwitPic and YFrog, which also allow users to post photos to the microblogging site.

--Written by Olivia Oran in New York.

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