It's not only hardware wallet that can be used to store bitcoin. We also have hot wallets which I believe that's what majority of newbies with little bitcoin are using currently.

However, we can still store our bitcoin in a cold storage and not compulsory that it must be a hardware wallet. Electrum cold storage is a good wallet to store your bitcoin offline. You only need to download it and generate your keys in an air gapped device and never connect it to the internet.