Digimon - NeoWiki:About

From Digimon - NeoWiki

Digimon, stands for Digital monsters. They are computer binary data with emotions and feelings similar to humans. They were first created by a group of programmers as basic pixel creatures, as you learn from the episodes, but began to evolve from that, they have a variety of stages including: Fresh, In-training, Rookie, Armor, Champion, Ultimate and mega.

Interestingly, Digimon did come before pokemon. In Japan, that is. However, the makers of digimon released the TV show and games to the other part of the world later then pokemon, so it is believed to be a Psuedo-pokemon and thought to have come after pokemon, when it truly hasn't.

They don't show the episodes for digimon in the UK anymore.