The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a corporation, trust, unincorporated association, or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 501(c) organizat ...
non-profit organization incorporated and based in
Mountain View,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. With over 39.3million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous and the List of ...

. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the
Unicode Standard
Unicode, formally the Unicode Standard, is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expressed in most of the world's writ ...
which was developed with the intention of replacing existing character encoding schemes which are limited in size and scope, and are incompatible with
multilingual
in Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the la ...
environments. The consortium describes its overall purpose as:
Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread adoption in the
internationalization and localization
In computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both computer hardware , hardware and softwa ...
of
software
Software is a collection of Instruction (computer science), instructions that tell a computer how to work. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and actually performs the work.
At the low level lang ...

. The standard has been implemented in many technologies, including
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language #REDIRECT Markup language
In computer text processing, a markup language is a system for annotation, annotating a document in a way that is Syntax (logic), syntactically distinguishable fro ...

, the
Java programming language
Java is a class-based, object-oriented
Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing sev ...
,
Swift
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), legally S.W.I.F.T. SCRL, is a Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the ...
, and modern
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software
System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. Examples of system software include operating systems (OS) like macOS, Linux, Android (operating system), Android and Mi ...

s.
Voting members include computer software and hardware companies with an interest in text-processing standards, including
Adobe
Adobe (; ) is a building material
Building material is material used for construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wher ...
, the
Bangladesh Computer Council
The Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), is a statutory and autonomous government body located in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that aids in the use of information technology and the formulation of related policy.
Bangladesh Computer Council operates a Uptime ...
,
Emojipedia
Emojipedia is an emoji
Emoji ( ; from Japanese 絵文字 ; plural ''emoji'' or ''emojis'') are pictograms, logograms, ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Ancient Greek, Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that rep ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, an ...
,
Google
Google LLC is an American multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational stat ...

,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. The company began in 1911, founded in Endicott, New York, as the C ...

,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation which produces Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best-know ...

, the
Omani Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs,
Monotype Imaging
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia
Philadelphia (colloquially known simply as Philly) is the largest city in the Commonwealth
A commonwealth is a traditional English term ...
,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer
In sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. Th ...

,
Salesforce
Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) service and also provides enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automa ...
,
SAP SE
SAP SE () is a German multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational state, a sove ...
,
Tamil Virtual Academy
Tamil Virtual Academy, formerly known as the Tamil Virtual University, is a distance education institution based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The Government of Tamil Nadu established the Tamil Virtual University on 17 February 2001 as a soci ...

, and the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public
In public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization ...

. Technical decisions relating to the
Unicode Standard
Unicode, formally the Unicode Standard, is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expressed in most of the world's writ ...
are made by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC).
Founding
The project to develop a universal character encoding scheme called Unicode was initiated in 1987 by
Joe Becker,
, and
Mark Davis. The Unicode Consortium was incorporated in
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. With over 39.3million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territories of the United States by population, most populous and the List of ...

on January 3, 1991, with the stated aim to develop, extend, and promote the use of the
Unicode Standard
Unicode, formally the Unicode Standard, is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expressed in most of the world's writ ...
. Mark Davis has been president of the Unicode Consortium since the Consortium was incorporated in 1991.
Work

The Unicode Consortium cooperates with many
standards development organizations, including
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Coded character sets is a standardization
Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest grou ...
and
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary ...

. While Unicode is often considered equivalent to ISO 10646, and the character sets are essentially identical, the Unicode standard imposes additional restrictions on implementations that ISO 10646 does not. Apart from ''The Unicode Standard'' (TUS) and its annexes (UAX), the Unicode Consortium also maintains the
CLDR
The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a corporation, trust, unincorporated asso ...
, collaborated with the IETF on
IDNA
Idna ( ar, إذنا) is a Palestinian
The Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, ''ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī''), also referred to as Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, links=no, ''al-Filasṭīniyyūn''; he, פָ ...
, and publishes related standards (UTS), reports (UTR), and utilities.
The group selects the
emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon
An icon (from the Greek language, Greek 'image, resemblance') is a religious wor ...

icons used by the world's smartphones, based on submissions from individuals and organizations who present their case with evidence for why each one is essential.
Unicode Technical Committee
The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meets quarterly to decide whether new characters will be encoded. A quorum of half of the Consortium's full members is required.
As of July 2020, there are nine full members, only one of which, the
Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs of Oman, is not a tech or software company. The other eight, as of the same period, are
Adobe
Adobe (; ) is a building material
Building material is material used for construction
Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. ...
,
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wher ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, an ...
,
Google
Google LLC is an American multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational stat ...

,
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. The company began in 1911, founded in Endicott, New York, as the C ...

,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation which produces Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best-know ...

,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer
In sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. Th ...

, and
SAP SE
SAP SE () is a German multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational state, a sove ...
.
The UTC accepts documents from any organization or individual, whether they are members of the Unicode Consortium or not.
The UTC holds its meetings behind closed doors, and its voting members are overwhelmingly white, American, and male. As of July 2020, the UTC rules on both emoji and script proposals at the same meeting.
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic's effect on travel, the meetings, which used to be hosted on the campuses of various tech companies who would open their doors to the Consortium for free, were in 2020 held online via Zoom, although the discussions remain confidential. The UTC prefers to work by
consensus
Consensus decision-making or consensus politics (often abbreviated to ''consensus'') is group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on es ...
, but on particularly contentious issues, votes may be necessary.
After it meets, the UTC releases a public statement on each proposal it considered.
Due to the volume of incoming proposals, various subcommittees, such as the Script Ad Hoc Group and Emoji Subcommittee, exist to submit recommendations to the full UTC ''
en banc
In law, an en banc session (; French for "in bench") (also known as ''in banc'', ''in banco'' or ''in bank'') is a session in which a case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Case, the metalli ...
''.
The UTC is under no obligation to heed these recommendations,
although in practice it usually does.
Publications
The Unicode Consortium maintains
History of Unicode Release and Publication Dates
Publications include
*
*
*
See also
*
Comparison of Unicode encodings
This article compares Unicode
Unicode, formally the Unicode Standard, is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expr ...
*
Universal Character Set characters
The Unicode Consortium (UC) and the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) collaborate on the Universal Character Set (UCS). The UCS is an international standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music, and ...
*
Universal Coded Character Set
The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of character (computing), characters defined by the International Organization for Standardization, International Standard ISO/International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC  ...
References
External links
*
{{authority control
Unicode
501(c)(3) organizations
Standards organizations in the United States
Organizations based in Santa Clara County, California
Mountain View, California
Organizations established in 1991
1991 establishments in California