i-mode

Cultural/Communication

NTT DoCoMo's mobile internet platform launched in 1999, where the first emoji were created to enhance text communication.

i-mode was a revolutionary mobile internet service launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in February 1999. At its peak, it had over 50 million subscribers and pioneered mobile internet concepts that later became standard worldwide.

Emoji were created for i-mode because the service needed a way to express emotions and concepts within the constraints of early mobile messaging. The 176 original emoji became hugely popular, leading rival carriers (SoftBank, au/KDDI) to create their own incompatible emoji sets.

This fragmentation eventually drove the push to standardize emoji through Unicode, with Google and Apple submitting proposals in 2007-2009.

Related Terms

Emoji Emoji
A Japanese word (絵文字) meaning 'picture character' — small graphical symbols used in digital communication to express ideas, emotions, and objects. Shigetaka Kurita Shigetaka Kurita
Japanese artist who created the first emoji set — 176 12x12 pixel designs for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service in 1999. Unicode Consortium Unicode Consortium
The non-profit organization that develops and maintains the Unicode Standard, including the process for adding new emoji.

Related Tools

📊 Emoji Stats Emoji Stats
Explore statistics about the Unicode emoji set — category distribution, version growth, type breakdown.

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The History of Emoji: From DoCoMo to Unicode
Trace the complete history of emoji from Shigetaka Kurita's 176 pixel icons at NTT DoCoMo in 1999 to today's 3,900+ Unicode standard.