Apple has created a lot of wealth for executives whose companies supply components and manufacturing services for its products, most notably Taiwan-based Foxconn and TSMC. One of the lesser known beneficiaries, Luxshare, and its CEO Grace Wang take center stage in Wayne’s excellent piece today about Apple getting cozy with Chinese suppliers as a way to cut costs while currying favor with Beijing. 

By teaching those suppliers how to make some of the best consumer electronics in the world, Apple helped the Chinese upstarts erode the dominance of Taiwanese and other foreign-owned incumbents that have run many of the electronics factories in China that assemble Apple products. Notably, three of the most prominent Chinese suppliers increasingly used by Apple were founded and are led by women: Wang, whose firm is worth $53 billion and whose penny pinching and hard-driving culture are detailed in the piece; Lens Technology CEO Zhou Qunfei ($18 billion market cap), known as the “touchscreen queen”; and Lingyi iTech CEO Kathy Zeng ($8 billion market cap), whose firm makes small parts such as polished buttons.