How emoji became popular.

     Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e ("picture") + moji ("character"). The apparent resemblance to English "emotion" and "emoticon" is just a coincidence.
     Emoji have become increasingly popular since their international inclusion in Apple's iphone, which was followed by similar adoption by Android and other mobile operating systems.
     Microsoft added monochrome Unicode emoji coverage to the Segoe UI Symbol system font in Windows 8 and added color emoji in Windows 8.1 via the Segoe UI Emoji font.