Unicode 6.0 first encoded emoji characters for worldwide text interchange in 2010. This release was a major step in turning emoji from platform-specific Japanese pictograms into standardized characters that could be exchanged across computer systems.
The Unicode Consortium did not invent the original emoji designs. Japanese mobile carriers had already used pictographic characters, and the Unicode standard created code points that could represent many of them consistently. Individual companies still draw their own images, so the same character can look different on Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Samsung devices.
Unicode 6.0 included hundreds of emoji-related characters and symbols. Later releases added more people, foods, objects, flags, skin-tone modifiers, and sequences. A common mix-up is confusing the 2010 Unicode encoding milestone with the 1999 creation of Japan’s first widely known mobile emoji set.