New York ( Business)The coronavirus pandemic has taken a hit at emojis.
The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit that oversees emoji standards and is responsible for new releases, said it’s delaying its new batch of emojis by six months from March to September 2021 because of fallouts from coronavirus.
Emojis are typically approved in January before they’re available across devices in September, the Consortium said, which means iPhone and Android users won’t see new emojis in 2021.
“Under the current circumstances we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date,” Mark Davis, president of the Consortium, said in a statement.
However, this doesn’t impact the release of the new emojis like the transgender flag, the gender-neutral Santa Claus and others that were announced in January. The new set, part of Unicode’s 13.0 standard, includes 117 new animated characters and will be released this fall.