Emoji – is the Japanese term for the ideograms or smileys used in Japanese electronic messages and webpages. Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means “picture” (e) + “letter” (moji). The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardized and built into the handsets. Some emoji are very specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing (apologizing) businessman, a face wearing a face mask, a white flower used to denote “brilliant homework” or a group of emoji representing popular foods: ramen noodles, dango, onigiri, Japanese curry, and sushi. The three main Japanese operators, NTT DoCoMo, au, and SoftBank Mobile (formerly Vodafone), have each defined their own variants of emoji.
Although originally only available in Japan, some emoji character sets have been incorporated into Unicode, allowing them to be used elsewhere as well. As a result, some phones such as Windows Phone 7 line and the iPhone allow access to the symbols without requiring a Japanese operator. Emoji have also started appearing in emailing services such as Gmail (accessed via Google Labs) in April 2009 and websites such as Flipnote Hatena. Several SMS applications for Android powered phones also provide plugins that allow the use of Emoji. Apple’s Mac OS X operating system supports emoji as of version 10.7 Lion with the Apple Color Emoji typeface.
Source: Wikipedia
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