If AI improved as quickly as hardware used to do then most of these efforts would succeed, since what would have been on the horizon of plausibility one year would be very easy to do a year or two later.
But that improvement didn't come, the technology plateaued so most of these efforts failed.
Almost everyone had a computer in their home before we had smartphones, those computers did shape society in a massive way. You didn't see them on the streets like you do phones but the effects were still just as massive.
'Almost everyone' was a very select group even in the 2000s. Look at reddit discourse post cheap postpaid internet phones versus before.
The internet connected computer in the home was a productivity tool. Even just gaming required gamers to become pretty PC/OS/tech savvy. Cheap postpaid internet phones are bread and circuses. They two have different effects on society.
Almost everyone, not everyone, majority of households in USA had a computer already by year 2000, and that is counting old people without kids who didn't keep up with trends.
So by the time smart phones hit almost everyone had a computer at home. If you are talking about the 90s that isn't relevant, the relevant part is how smart phones changed things, and at that time internet was already available to a large majority at home, smart phones just made it portable.
We're a few years in. It takes time to figure things out and see returns.
The web and dot com boom and bust still led to several trillion dollar companies, eventually.
AI will transform my industry, but not overnight. My employer is within that 95%... but won't be forever.