1999: Birth at NTT DoCoMo
The story of emojiEmoji
Mot japonais (絵文字) signifiant 'caractère image' — petits symboles graphiques utilisés dans la communication numérique pour exprimer des idées, des émotions et des objets. begins with Shigetaka KuritaShigetaka Kurita
Artiste japonais qui a créé le premier ensemble d'emoji — 176 designs de 12×12 pixels pour le service internet mobile i-mode de NTT DoCoMo en 1999., a young engineer at NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Working on the i-modei-mode
La plateforme internet mobile de NTT DoCoMo lancée en 1999, où les premiers emoji ont été créés pour enrichir la communication par texte. mobile internet service, Kurita's team needed a way to express emotions and convey information in the constraints of early mobile messaging — where screen space was limited and text-only communication felt flat.
Kurita designed 176 emoji, each a 12×12 pixel grid. He drew inspiration from manga expressions, weather symbols, and traffic signs. These tiny icons covered weather (☀️ ☁️ ☂️), emotions (😊 😢), and everyday objects (📱 ✉️). His original set is now in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.
2000-2009: The Japanese Carrier Wars
DoCoMo's emoji were a hit, so rival carriers created their own sets:
- SoftBank (then J-Phone/Vodafone) created a colorful set with 3D-style designs
- au/KDDI developed yet another incompatible set
The problem: sending an emoji from DoCoMo to SoftBank might show a completely different symbol — or nothing at all. This fragmentation was frustrating for Japanese users who expected emoji to work everywhere.
2007-2009: Google and Apple Take Notice
As smartphones went global, two companies recognized emoji's potential:
Google proposed adding emoji to UnicodeUnicode
Standard universel d'encodage des caractères qui attribue un numéro unique à chaque caractère de tous les systèmes d'écriture et ensembles de symboles, y compris les emoji. in 2007, submitting a formal proposal with Apple. Engineers from both companies worked to map the three Japanese carrier emoji sets into a unified encoding.
Apple quietly added emoji support to iPhone in 2008 — but only for the Japanese market (iPhone OS 2.2). A hidden emoji keyboard existed in the system, and tech-savvy users worldwide found ways to enable it, creating grassroots demand.
2010: Unicode 6.0 — Emoji Go Global
In October 2010, Unicode 6.0 officially incorporated 722 emoji. This was the watershed moment: emoji were now a global standard, not a Japanese curiosity.
The initial set included the familiar smileys, animals, food, weather, and symbols — but notably lacked diversity in human representation.
2011-2014: Platform Adoption
The years after standardization saw rapid adoption:
- Apple enabled the emoji keyboard globally in iOS 5 (2011)
- Android added native emoji support in Android 4.1 (2012)
- Windows added color emoji in Windows 8.1 (2013)
- Twitter created TwemojiTwemoji
Un ensemble d'emoji open source créé à l'origine par Twitter, fournissant des ressources emoji en SVG et PNG utilisables dans n'importe quel projet., the first open-source emoji set (2014)
Each platform designed its own visual style, leading to the cross-platform rendering differences we still see today.
2015: Emoji 1.0 and Skin Tones
Emoji 1.0 brought a transformative addition: skin tone modifiers based on the Fitzpatrick dermatological scale. Five modifier characters could be appended to human emoji, allowing users to select from six skin tones (including the default yellow).
This update also formalized the emoji versioning system, making it easier to track when specific emoji were added.
2016: The ZWJJointure sans chasse (ZWJ)
Caractère Unicode invisible (U+200D) utilisé pour combiner plusieurs emoji en un seul emoji composite, comme l'assemblage de personnes et d'objets pour former des emoji de professions. Explosion
Emoji 4.0 was a landmark release, adding over 2,000 new emoji through ZWJ (Zero Width Joiner) sequences. Gendered professions — woman firefighter 👩🚒, man cook 👨🍳, and dozens more — each with skin tone variants, massively expanded representation.
This version demonstrated the power of ZWJ sequences: combining existing emoji with an invisible joiner character to create new meanings without allocating new code points.
2019: Accessibility Emoji
Emoji 12.0 responded to calls for disability representation by adding: wheelchair users (🧑🦽), people with prosthetic limbs (🦿🦾), hearing aids (🦻), guide dogs (🦮), and the white cane (🧑🦯). These emoji were the result of a proposal by Apple advocating for better representation.
2020-Present: Maturity and Refinement
Recent years have seen the emoji set mature:
- Emoji 13.0 (2020): Trans flag 🏳️⚧️, ninja 🥷, pinched fingers 🤌
- Emoji 14.0 (2021): Melting face 🫠, handshake with skin tones 🫱🏻🫲🏿
- Emoji 15.0 (2022): Shaking face 🫨, moose 🫎, pink heart 🩷
- Emoji 15.1 (2023): Head shaking, phoenix 🐦🔥, lime 🍋🟩
- Emoji 16.0 (2024): Just 3 new emoji, signaling the set's maturity
By the Numbers
| Year | Emoji Version | Total Emoji |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Unicode 6.0 | 722 |
| 2015 | Emoji 1.0 | 1,140 |
| 2016 | Emoji 4.0 | 2,389 |
| 2020 | Emoji 13.0 | 3,300 |
| 2024 | Emoji 16.0 | 3,781 |
What's Next?
The era of adding hundreds of emoji per year is over. The Unicode Consortium has become increasingly selective, raising the bar for new proposals. Future emoji additions will likely be small, focused, and fill specific representation gaps rather than broad categories.
But emoji continue to evolve in other ways: animated emoji, Emoji KitchenEmoji Kitchen
Une fonctionnalité de Google permettant aux utilisateurs de combiner deux emoji pour créer des autocollants originaux, disponible dans Gboard et Google Search. mashups, AR emoji avatars, and ever-more-expressive stickerSticker
Images numériques plus grandes et plus détaillées utilisées dans les applications de messagerie, souvent animées, qui complètent les emoji standard mais en sont distinctes. packs show that pictographic communication is still growing — just beyond the Unicode standard.