Apple Inc., Google Inc. and China’s Xiaomi Inc. are taking strategic steps to safeguard their revenue streams and attract new customers, at the expense of traditional wireless carriers.

No longer do the two sides of the mobile coin — the actual device and the wireless data that powers its functionality — live in separate but mutually beneficial worlds. As companies like Apple AAPL, +1.57% take greater control of hardware sales, and others buy swaths of data to sell directly to consumers, they are pushing out the traditional carrier.

“You could say that Apple and its frenemies are trying to disintermediate the carriers,” said Roger Kay, president of tech consulting company Endpoint Technologies.

Apple’s introduction earlier this month of an iPhone installment payment plan — which rivals similar offerings from T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS, +1.64% , AT&T Inc.a T, -0.41% and Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, +0.35% — encourages consumers to upgrade their hardware more often through Apple, “threatening the carriers’ lock-in,” UBS analyst Steven Milunovich said.

Samsung Electronics 005930, +0.85% , whose Galaxy phones use Google’s GOOG, +2.39% GOOGL, +2.07% Android GOOG, +2.39% operating system, is said to be working on a similar direct-to-consumer plan that would also reduce its dependence on the intermediary carriers.

On the surface, payment plans seem like big hardware companies rightfully taking a larger role in smartphone sales. But other companies are taking it a step further by encroaching on the service part of the deal, and that has some analysts wondering whether these incremental moves could one day serve to unseat wireless carriers.

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Xiaomi, China’s largest smartphone manufacturer, launched two prepaid wireless plans this week that will directly compete with services offered by China’s national carriers. The move establishes Xiaomi as a mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, which means it will buy huge quantities of data from larger carriers to be repackaged and, in this case, resold to Xiaomi’s handset customers.

The Xiaomi Mi offering “appears to be an expansion into a new business rather than simply to sell more phones,” said Walter Piecyk, a tech analyst with BTIG Research.

This follows a similar move by Google, which launched its own MVNO called Project Fi earlier this year. The Google project was less related to hardware sales — instead looking to provide Internet access to the unconnected and secure Google’s Internet business in the largely untapped developing market — but the ultimate effect on the wireless industry is the same: increased competition.

“We can only wonder if Google had more ambitious plans for Project Fi that were curtailed by the dominant operators in the United States,” Piecyk said.

Piecyk even questions Apple’s motives with its upgrade plan, wondering if, when it starts to “erode the power” of U.S. wireless operators, this all turns out to be “a first step in a larger plan.” There was a report earlier this year that Apple was considering establishing an MVNO, though the tech giant vocally denied it.

Wireless carriers are by no means on the way out, however.

Manufacturer’s payment plans have a long way to go in before they can really threaten the carriers’ positioning. T-Mobile and Sprint US:S offer more affordable installment plans, and T-Mobile this week touted record iPhone sales despite the launch of the Apple upgrade program. Consumers, meanwhile, are still skeptical about WiFi-first service options, which are sometimes ridden with weak signals and a lack of wide-scale availability.

Still, telecom companies are — for the first time since the advent of the mobile phone — forced to dig deep and figure out a way to roll with the tide.

“The carriers have to hunker down and take it, or figure out some other way to go,” Kay said.