The History of Emoji: From DoCoMo to Unicode

1999: Birth at NTT DoCoMo

The story of emojiEmoji
A Japanese word (絵文字) meaning 'picture character' — small graphical symbols used in digital communication to express ideas, emotions, and objects. begins with Shigetaka KuritaShigetaka Kurita
Japanese artist who created the first emoji set — 176 12x12 pixel designs for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service in 1999., a young engineer at NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Working on the i-modei-mode
NTT DoCoMo's mobile internet platform launched in 1999, where the first emoji were created to enhance text communication. 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
Universal character encoding standard that assigns a unique number to every character across all writing systems and symbol sets, including 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 emojiColor Emoji
  Full-color emoji rendered using bitmap images or color vector graphics, as opposed to monochrome text-style rendering. in Windows 8.1 (2013)
• Twitter created TwemojiTwemoji
  An open-source emoji set originally created by Twitter, providing SVG and PNG emoji assets that can be used in any project., 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 ZWJ Explosion

Emoji 4.0 was a landmark release, adding over 2,000 new emoji through ZWJ (Zero Width JoinerZero Width Joiner (ZWJ)
An invisible Unicode character (U+200D) used to join multiple emoji into a single composite emoji, such as combining people and objects into profession emoji.) 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

What's Next?

The era of adding hundreds of emoji per year is over. The Unicode ConsortiumUnicode Consortium
The non-profit organization that develops and maintains the Unicode Standard, including the process for adding new emoji. 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
A Google feature that lets users combine two emoji into creative mashup stickers, available in Gboard and Google Search. mashups, AR emoji avatars, and ever-more-expressive stickerSticker
Larger, more detailed digital images used in messaging apps, often animated, that complement but are separate from standard emoji. packs show that pictographic communication is still growing — just beyond the Unicode standardUnicode Standard
The complete character encoding system maintained by the Unicode Consortium, defining characters, properties, algorithms, and encoding forms..