People Behind Your Smartphone
The founders, engineers and business leaders behind smartphone hardware, software and chips, past and present.
11 faces
Who's in this deck?11 names — peek before you play
Tim Cook
Executive chairman; CEO from 2011 to 2026 · Apple
Timothy Donald Cook is an American business executive who served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc. from 2011 to 2026, and has been the company's executive chairman since September 2026.
John Ternus
Chief executive officer · Apple
John Ternus is an American engineer and business executive who became Apple's CEO on 1 September 2026, succeeding Tim Cook. He previously led Apple's hardware engineering team.
Ren Zhengfei
Chinese entrepreneur and engineer
Ren Zhengfei is a Chinese entrepreneur and engineer who founded Huawei, the telecommunications equipment and smartphone company.
Lei Jun
Chinese billionaire entrepreneur
Lei Jun is a Chinese billionaire entrepreneur and computer engineer. He is known for being the founder, chairman, and CEO of the consumer electronics company Xiaomi. He also is the chairman of Kingsoft and Shunwei Capital.
Sundar Pichai
CEO of Alphabet Inc. and Google
Pichai Sundararajan, better known as Sundar Pichai, is an Indian–American business executive who has been the CEO of Google since 2015 and the CEO of its parent company Alphabet Inc. since 2019.
Carl Pei
Swedish entrepreneur
Carl Pei Yu is a Swedish entrepreneur. He co-founded OnePlus along with Pete Lau in 2013 and was the director of OnePlus Global. He left the firm in October 2020 and founded Nothing, where he is CEO.
Cristiano Amon
Electronics engineer
Cristiano Amon is a Brazilian electrical engineer and businessman. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and president of Qualcomm, a semiconductor research and development company. Amon began his career working on wireless technology for early cell phone networks.
Tony Fadell
Inventor of the iPod, engineer
Anthony Michael Fadell is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs.
Jony Ive
English designer
Sir Jonathan Paul Ive is a British-American designer. He is best known for his work at Apple Inc., where he was senior vice-president of industrial design and chief design officer. Ive is the founder of LoveFrom, a creative collective that works with Ferrari, Airbnb, OpenAI and other global brands.
Andy Rubin
American businessman
Andy Rubin is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded Android, the company behind the mobile operating system later acquired by Google.
Martin Cooper
American engineer
Martin Cooper is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field.