2003 WiFi was routinely awful, though. Generally unstable, poor compatibility and lousy range. A lot better now, but still could be easier for non-techs.
If I actually wanted to hack into networks, encrypted WiFi used WEP which could be cracked in minutes on a typical laptop. Most communication was unencrypted too, pwning entire WiFi networks wasn't even fun considering how easy it was.
Used to be that every cafe and business just had an open wifi network. Now if they provide it at all it’s password protected
I reacted to this. Not personal open wifi. In cafes the password is often on the wall, in the menu or otherwise easily obtained.
Probably increasingly irrelevant with increased use of just mobile phones and 5G anyway.
One of my early IT jobs in the 2000s was at a SME with Wifi: after you connected radio-wise, you had to start the VPN client, because at the time there really wasn't any (effective) encryption of the signal in 802.11 itself.
If a particular category is considered then yes, phones are the biggest chunk. But virtually every device these days comes with WiFi. So wifi is now the default method of connecting something.
Mostly because around here you can have 100GB over 5G for less than 10€ + they mostly don't use computers (a.k.a laptops) except for a) school (where they have free WiFi+Internet) and b) binge-watching the occasional Netflix (and then they use connection sharing)
Their first move upon setting up a new phone is to disable Bluetooth+WiFi to, uh, "save battery" (their cargo-cult answer, every single time)