Cluj-Napoca, 22 February 2019 – NTT DATA, leading provider of business and IT solutions, celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Emojis. On February 22, 1999, customers of NTT DOCOMO, INC. the mobile operator of the NTT Group and partner company of NTT DATA, were able to send digital icons as part of text messages via mobile communications for the first time. This was made possible by NTT DOCOMO's mobile data service i-modeTM.
One of the most popular features of i-mode was text messaging. As their scope was limited, DOCOMO made the decision to provide a set of pictograms. The emotional side of communication played a central role. Images, however simple they may be, can at least partially replace the missing non-verbal signals such as facial expressions, gestures or tone of voice. This creates trust in digital communication.
"There are times in our life when we lack the words to articulate a state of mind. Slowly, we quit handwriting and use more and more digital devices. Through Emojis, social co-existence has received and will continue to receive a complete other dimension, which we cannot understand right now, especially in the context of the artificial intelligence offensive. However, we should not leave to chance the way we communicate, or how we express our feelings, and this will become a challenge. We think ahead to the future generations and to the tools they will develop in order to accelerate but also simplify even more communication between people." - Daniel Metz, CEO NTT DATA Romania
In typical Japanese tradition, the developers creatively maximized the expressiveness of each emoji within the restriction of 12 x 12 pixels. It developed an innovative sign language that is globally understandable. The monochrome displays with low resolution that were common at that time forced a simplicity of representation that did not fall under copyright protection. As a result, more and more mobile operators were able to offer Emojis. At the same time, the continuing success of i-mode in Japan, Singapore and other countries ensured the rapid spread of the new "picture letters". The name Emoji originated from the combination of the Japanese words "e" and "moji" for "picture" and "letters".
In 2010, around 700 Emojis were included in Unicode, the international standard for the digital encoding of characters. Since then, the digital pictograms have been universally applicable. The Emoji trend received a further push from social networks. At the same time, providers of smartphone operating systems simplified the input of emojis in all forms of text-based communication such as e-mail, SMS, instant messaging and social media posts.
Today, emojis are billions of times more widespread worldwide. Time and again, figures on their use show that DOCOMO’s approach of giving digital communication an emotional level has a lasting effect: red hearts and smiling faces are regularly at the top of the rankings of the most frequently used emojis, despite the fact that unicode.org only has 149 emojis in the "Smileys & Emotion" category. For comparison: The Emoji catalogue of the standardization committee in its current version contains 3019 different Emojis in ten categories. Trend: rising.
* “i-mode” is a trademark of NTT DOCOMO, INC.
About NTT DATA Romania
NTT DATA Romania is an IT service provider and system integrator, with a team of over 1,700 specialists in Romania and Serbia, delivering a variety of projects across diverse industries: Automotive, Banking, Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities, Public Sector, Retail, Transportation & Logistics.
The business portfolio includes the following services: development and integration of standard or customized software solutions, application management services, testing, quality assurance, IT & business consulting, IT security and infrastructure services etc.
NTT DATA – Trusted Global Innovator is part of NTT Group (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone), one of the global ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) leaders, with over 283,000 employees and a large portfolio of global infrastructure solutions, communications and IT services. NTT DATA is in Top 10* global business and IT services provider. * Source: Gartner, "Market Share: IT Services, 2017" published on June 11, 2018
For more information, please visit www.nttdata.ro