Zhou Qunfei: The Factory Worker Behind the Glass in Your iPhone

Millions of people touch her work every day and have never heard her name. Zhou Qunfei began as a teenage factory worker polishing watch glass. Today she is the founder of Lens Technology, a company that has worked on virtually every generation of iPhone. Her rise wasn’t one lucky break. It was years of learning, saving, taking risks and holding on through hard moments.

This story looks at how she did it, and at one difficult chapter that shouldn’t be left out.

Where she came from

Zhou Qunfei was born in 1970 in a poor mountain village in Hunan province, central China. She lost her mother at five, and her father went blind after a work accident. She has said she grew up constantly thinking about where her next meal would come from. As a child she also helped her family raise pigs and ducks for food and extra money.

Money for school ran out. She left in her mid-teens (reports say 15 or 16) and headed to Shenzhen to find work. She started on a construction site, then joined a watch glass factory and worked on the assembly line. One account says she earned about a dollar a day polishing glass.

At night she studied accounting and computing. Those skills set her apart, and she was later promoted to a manager at the factory.

How it started

In 1990, when the factory owner was thinking of abandoning an expansion project, the 20-year-old offered to take it on, using screen printing skills she had taught herself to make patterned watch glass.

In 1993 she started her own business. She had about 20,000 in savings (sources differ on whether that was yuan or Hong Kong dollars, which works out to roughly US$2,500 to $3,000), and she set up the workshop with relatives in an apartment in Shenzhen.

Getting paid wasn’t easy, because some clients didn’t settle their bills. When the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit, she accepted factory equipment from watchmakers instead of cash. That let her build a full production line of her own.

The hard part

In 2001 she began applying her watch glass skills to mobile phone screens, just as the industry was starting to shift from plastic to glass. In 2003 she founded Lens Technology, and Motorola called her out of the blue to ask her to supply glass screens for its Razr V3 phone. She had even chosen the company’s name with care: according to Wikipedia, “Lens” was picked so the company would show up when customers searched online.

Winning that deal nearly broke her. She has said she sold her house and other valuables to meet Motorola’s demands, and she describes it as the darkest moment of her business life. The gamble paid off. The deal arrived just as the mobile phone industry was shifting from plastic to glass screens, and it gave her a foothold in the global phone market.

What she achieved

The next big break was Apple. When Apple began developing the first iPhone in 2006, it turned to Zhou’s team to solve the challenge of producing a glass screen, and Lens won the contract to supply the glass cover when the iPhone launched in 2007. Lens has since worked on virtually every generation of iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac.

To be precise, Lens makes the glass cover, not the whole phone or its display. One account describes it as a glass specialist that cuts and places Gorilla Glass for Apple.

The company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2015 and in Hong Kong in July 2025. It now has more than 100,000 employees and has expanded into electric vehicles and robotics, supplying carmakers such as Tesla and BYD. Forbes ranked her the world’s richest self-made woman in 2017.

Despite that, she stays low-key. She rarely gives interviews, and long-time employees say she arrives on time, eats in the company canteen and flies economy.

A complicated chapter

Her story also has a serious complication. In December 2020 The Washington Post reported, citing documents gathered by the Tech Transparency Project, that Lens Technology had received Uyghur and other minority workers transferred from Xinjiang. Apple said it found no evidence that Lens used such workers on Apple production lines and that it has zero tolerance for forced labour. The sources reviewed for this article don’t include a statement from Lens, so readers should weigh the reports and Apple’s response for themselves.

What we can learn

Learn while you earn. Her night classes in accounting and computing gave her skills that helped her move up and later run a business.

Turn a setback into an advantage. When clients couldn’t pay in 1997, she took equipment instead and built her own production line.

Spot the shift early. She saw phones moving from plastic to glass and was ready when the demand arrived.

Be ready to risk a lot for the big chance. She sold her house to win the Motorola contract, and it opened the door to Apple.

One key takeaway

Resilience is preparation plus nerve. She spent years building skills so that when the big chance came, she was ready and willing to bet everything on it.

Conclusion

Zhou Qunfei left school as a teenager, worked on an assembly line and had almost nothing to fall back on. She kept learning, took chances when they came, and built one of the most important suppliers in consumer electronics. Her story shows what determination can build. It also reminds us that businesses at this scale deserve close and honest scrutiny, and that a full story includes the questions as well as the achievements.

Sources

• The Standard: From factory worker to glass queen (May 2026)
• Forbes: Zhou Qunfei & family
• CNBC: World’s richest self-made woman shares 3 pieces of advice for success (2018)
• The Boston Globe: Apple’s longtime supplier accused of using forced labor in China (2020)
• The Washington Post: Apple supplier Lens Technology used forced Uighur laborers (2020)
• Tech Transparency Project: Another Apple supplier linked to forced labor
• iPhone in Canada: Apple supplier Lens Technology accused of using forced Uyghur labor (2020)
• IBTimes UK: Meet Billionaire Zhou Qunfei (2024)
• Nairametrics: Zhou Qunfei, the factory worker who built a lens company from scratch (2021)
• China Books Review: How the iPhone was Made in China (2025)
• Wikipedia: Lens Technology
• Wikipedia: Zhou Qunfei

Disclaimer: This story is based on information available in the public domain, including the sources listed above, and has been carefully researched. It is shared for information and inspiration only. Details can vary between sources and change over time. GritView is not affiliated with the people or companies mentioned. If you spot an error, please let us know and we will review it.