This guy has made $7 billion from iPhone screens

A shopper ltries out the new Apple iPhone 6 at the Apple Store on the first day of sales of the new phone in Germany on September 19, 2014 in Berlin, Germany.

Photograph by Sean Gallup — Getty Images

Yeung Kin-man is a leader in the smartphone cover glass market. In fact, he’s worth an estimated $7 billion, according to Bloomberg.

And his empire is likely to grow only larger. His Hong Kong-based company, Biel Crystal Manufactory, supplies the cover glass for Apple and Samsung’s wildly popular phones.

“In the field of cover glass, Biel has always been the market leader,” Terry Yu, an analyst at IHS Technology, told Bloomberg.

As Bloomberg notes, Yeung began his foray into manufacturing nearly 30 years ago when he started in the business of covering watches with glass. He realized that process could be duplicated for smartphones, too. Per Bloomberg:

He started manufacturing the covers after receiving an order of 1 million screens for the Motorola Razr, according to the Hong Kong Economic Journal. He eventually produced 100 million units for the phone maker, the newspaper said. The company snagged Apple as a customer when the first-generation iPhone was released in 2007, according to the report.

Yu believes that Yeung’s company is responsible for over half the orders for cover glass from Apple and Samsung.