I use the telephoto lens much more often than the ultra wide.
I do too, but it's possible that phone manufacturers have found that slightly more people prefer an ultra-wide camera instead of a telephoto. A vague Twitter poll from a few years ago found about a 60-40 split favoring the ultra-wide, but a 2021 poll from
Android Authority found that about 54% preferred a telephoto, and about 46% preferred an ultra-wide. I suspect the figure is closer to about 50-50, with some variation from poll to poll and year to year.
Though I use the telephoto a lot more than the ultra-wide, I'll concede that ultra-wide has definite uses, mainly when you need to fit more into the frame without taking multiple steps back, which isn't always possible, particularly in a room, and from what I was able to find out, most photos people take with their smartphones are of subjects that aren't so far away as to need a telephoto, so maybe these are some of the reasons smartphone makers choose an ultra-wide when they're deciding which camera to include in addition to the main camera.
Also, due to more complicated optics, a telephoto camera module is significantly larger than an ultra-wide. It's not hugely larger, certainly not twice the size, maybe approaching about 1.5x the size, so maybe with the tight space available inside the Air, that might be another reason Apple might be choosing the ultra-wide instead of the telephoto.