Cellphone Imports Into Mexico Need NOM Compliance From July 1, 2026: What Changed and the Courier Trap to Close First

As of July 1, 2026, three tariff fractions covering cellphones can no longer enter Mexico without demonstrating compliance with two Normas Oficiales Mexicanas (NOM): NOM-001-SCFI-2018 on electronic-device safety and NOM-024-SCFI-2013 on commercial information. That includes phones brought in through the courier and parcel channel that, until now, was the easy way around NOM compliance. The obligation is days away, and the channel most exposed to it is the one most operations assume is safe.

The change was published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación (DOF) on May 29, 2026 and took general effect the next day. But for these specific cellphone NOM requirements, the Secretaría de Economía granted a short extension. Read the dates carefully, because getting them wrong is the difference between thinking you have already missed this and knowing you still have a narrow window to act.

What the requirement actually is

The Acuerdo modified the Anexo 2.4.1 (the Anexo de NOMs) to add three cellphone fractions of the Tarifa de la Ley de los Impuestos Generales de Importación y de Exportación to the goods that must demonstrate NOM compliance, removing them from a prior exclusion. The three fractions are 8517.13.01 (smartphones), 8517.14.91 (other mobile phones and other wireless-network handsets), and 8517.18.99 (other telephones and network devices).

Those fractions now have to demonstrate two things at importation. NOM-001-SCFI-2018, Aparatos electrónicos, Requisitos de seguridad y métodos de prueba (published in the DOF on September 17, 2019), sets the safety requirements electronic equipment must meet. NOM-024-SCFI-2013 governs the commercial information that has to appear on packaging, instructions, and warranties. A phone in one of these fractions now needs both: the safety certification and the commercial-information labeling.

The dates that actually matter

This is where most operations will get it wrong, because there are two dates and only one of them is the one that binds you.

The Acuerdo was published in the DOF on May 29, 2026, and its general transitorio set it to enter into force the day after publication, May 30. On that reading, the obligation looks like it has been live for weeks. It has not, for cellphones. On the same day, May 29, the Subsecretaría de Industria y Comercio issued a boletín through the SNICE extending the applicability of the changes to regla 2.4.11 and the Anexo 2.4.1, specifically as they relate to NOM-001-SCFI-2018 and NOM-024-SCFI-2013, until July 1, 2026, to give operations with already-scheduled shipments time to adjust.

So the date that governs cellphones is July 1, 2026, not May 30. That extension is the only reason there is still room to prepare, and it closes on July 1. One piece of relief carries over: under the Acuerdo's transitorio, valid conformity certificates issued under prior norm versions keep their legal validity before customs until their original expiration date, so a current, valid certificate does not have to be reissued just because the calendar turned.

The trap: the courier and parcel gray zone just closed

Here is the part that earns this piece. The exclusion that these three fractions lost was not only a general one. The Acuerdo also modified regla 2.4.11, fracción IX, the rule that lets goods imported under the simplified pedimento procedure through courier and parcel companies skip NOM compliance. The three cellphone fractions were added to the list of goods that, in no case, can use that simplified exception.

In plain terms: importing phones through a courier or parcel lane used to be the channel where NOM compliance quietly did not get checked. As of July 1, it does. Cross-border e-commerce operations and couriers that move phones under simplified entries are the most exposed, precisely because that channel was built on the assumption that the exception would always be there.

A cross-border e-commerce operation that brings phone SKUs into Mexico through a courier lane, on simplified entries, has likely never assembled a NOM-001-SCFI-2018 certificate for those units, because it never had to. From July 1, that same lane requires the certificate and the NOM-024-SCFI-2013 labeling, or the goods do not clear. The operation did not change. The exception it relied on did.

On paper, a phone is the same product it was in April. The regime it clears under is not, and the channel that felt frictionless is the one that just acquired a requirement.

What to do before July 1

The window is short, so the work is specific.

Verify, for every phone SKU in one of the three fractions, that you hold a valid NOM-001-SCFI-2018 conformity certificate, and confirm whether it was issued under a prior norm version that the transitorio still recognizes. Confirm the NOM-024-SCFI-2013 commercial information (packaging, instructions, warranty) is in place for the units as they will be presented. For any lane that moves phones through courier or parcel simplified entries, reconfigure so those fractions route through the full compliance path, because the simplified exception is no longer available to them. And carry out the conformity-assessment steps through PLATIICA, the Plataforma Tecnológica Integral de Infraestructura de la Calidad, which has replaced the former SINEC portal.

Quick check: pull your last month of phone imports and identify which ones moved on a simplified courier or parcel entry. Those are the units that cleared without NOM scrutiny and will not after July 1. They are the first place to look, not the last.

The broader pattern

This is not a one-off. The Secretaría de Economía has been working through the Anexo 2.4.1 exclusions methodically, narrowing the gaps that let regulated goods enter without demonstrating the NOM that applies to them. Cellphones are a high-volume, high-visibility example, but the direction is consistent: the exceptions that made certain goods easy to move are being closed one fraction at a time. Across more than 190,000 customs operations a year at 39+ ports, the operations that stay ahead of this treat the Anexo de NOMs as a live document they check before each new SKU, not a static list they consulted once.

The exception that made phones easy to move closes July 1. The operations that treat July 1 as a certification-and-labeling project will keep clearing. The ones that treat it as news will find out at the dock, on a held shipment, that the channel they trusted changed underneath them. Pull the phone SKUs, check the certificates, and fix the courier lane before the date does it for you.

Talk to a Joffroy expert about a NOM-compliance check on your cellphone fractions before July 1.

TRADE. UNDER CONTROL.