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It's a gpu power consumption/battery life issue. Putting a high res display in an Air clone ("ultrabook") means poor battery life unless you can also make a very efficient GPU (which so far only Apple has done).

The battery life on my 4k XPS13 is atrocious and it gets hot enough to burn my thighs.

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Battery life vs display resolution is always a balancing act. Even macbooks don't have 4k displays for this reason. Makes me wonder why manufacturers opt to make so many 4k laptops compared to 2k ones.

4k looks vastly better and many laptop users seldom or rarely run off battery for more than an hour or so.

While I agree that my laptop gets used plugged in most of the time, it is nice for it to last a while for the occasions when I'm away from an outlet (which I argue would be the primary benefit of using a laptop).

Economies of scale. Factories are pumping out huge numbers of 4K panels while the more balanced panels Apple uses are likely made to order. So in most cases it’s probably cheaper for manufacturers to use 4K panels, despite their problems.

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