Docomo Emoji Set To Be Officially Discontinued

An anonymous reader shares a report: [Last] week, it was announced that Docomo's emoji designs will no longer appear on any of the Japanese mobile network's devices. This marks the end of an emoji era that first began in 1999, even though the set hasn't been updated since 2013.

Unlike these earlier systems, Docomo's emoji set in 1999 was explicitly tied to mobile internet use and would become the template for emoji standardization in the 2000s and 2010s, alongside emoji design sets implemented by Softbank and KDDI on their own versions of i-mode (J-Sky and EZweb, respectively). Docomo's set would receive several updates between 1999 and 2013, introducing color support and additional concepts to the keyboard. But now, as per this week's announcement, it will finally be discontinued. Spanning 26 years, it's undeniable that Docomo's emoji set played a foundational role in emoji history, even if its last incarnation remained unchanged for almost 12 of those 26 years.

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