Add emojis to the growing list of industries being negatively affected by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The Unicode Consortium, which oversees emojis on smartphones, has announced that there will be no new emojis released in 2021, due to the outbreak. The crop for this year were finalized before the pandemic took hold of the country and should hit people’s phones this fall, however.
The delay was forced due to the Consortium’s reliance on volunteers, who are focused on other things right now.
“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,” said Mark Davis, president of the Consortium, in a blog post.
The delay means you’ll have to wait a bit longer to incorporate a ninja or smiley face wearing Groucho glasses to your emoji arsenal. Other planned emoji for 2021 included parents bottle-feeding a baby, cockroaches, blueberries, and a woolly mammoth.
One upside: If you were hoping to submit an emoji for consideration for next year, you’ve got a little extra time. People can now submit their proposals from June 15 through Sept. 1.
New emojis typically are introduced around the start of the fourth quarter, usually around the same time as major OS updates from Apple and Google.
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