Sun's McNealy: 'We're not working on iPhone killer'

Sun Microsystems chairman Scott McNealy said he was misquoted in a South Korean newspaper earlier this week as saying Sun and mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics are working on an iPhone-killer.

McNealy, who stopped in New York on his way back from South Korea to deliver a speech at the World Business Forum, said that the newspaper must have misunderstood a translation of what he had said.

He said: "I never said that. I'm not really sure where they got that. I think it was a translation problem."

When pressed further during an interview, McNealy remained tight-lipped on any news. "We haven't announced anything," he said.

Indeed, the company has not announced any official partnership with Samsung but a representative for the phone maker told the Associated Press after the misinterpreted quote circulated that the companies are working together.

Sun, which already provides a stripped-down version of Java for billions of mobile phones sold around the world, announced in May a more robust version of its Java software called JavaFX Mobile.

It's geared toward small devices such as smart phones that have more processing power than the average mobile. Unlike the Java Micro Edition, which today runs on billions of mobiles around the globe, the JavaFX Mobile software is most similar to the Java Standard Edition (SE) software that runs on standard PCs.

With this more powerful software, Samsung and its partners could develop applications for mobile phones that more closely resemble those running on PCs. This means web surfing and interactive mobile phone games would look more like the things people are used to on their PCs.

Apple has already attempted to do this with its iPhone, which allows people to shrink and magnify web pages so that the pages render on the screen just as they do on a regular computer.

Marguerite Reardon writes for CNET News.com