The Hindu : Front Page : Who is that ‘iPhone Girl’?

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Thursday, Aug 28, 2008
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Who is that ‘iPhone Girl’?

— PHOTO: AFP

SMILEY: The unnamed assembly line worker as celebrity.

HONG KONG: Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the Internet about her identity. The three pictures, posted on the Apple discussion website MacRumors.com, show a young Asian woman working on what appears to be an assembly line for iPhones.

Dressed in a pink striped outfit and hat and wearing gloves with yellow fingertips, the young woman now known on the Web as the “iPhone Girl” is shown smiling and making victory signs as she poses next to an iPhone.

The MacRumors.com user who posted the photos last week, identified as only “markm49uk” from England, said in a posting that one of the pictures showed up on a new 3G iPhone when the iTunes programme was launched. “It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun. Has anyone else found this?” the posting said.

The posting received more than 360 responses on MacRumors.com, with readers commenting and speculating about the woman’s age, looks and working conditions. “She is so fired,” a reader identified as ‘PredatoryWasp86’ said. “That’s nice that at least they have some fun in the drab of assembling technology,” another reader, ‘BrownManUPS,’ said.

“She looks about 12 or 13 to me! I don’t think Stevo is going to be impressed at all. It looks a little bit too much like child labour,” ‘sibruk’ wrote, referring to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.

News reports say the woman may work at a factory run by an Apple contractor, Foxconn Technology Group, in Shenzhen. — AP

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