Launching from the Equator, Eastward, is the most energy efficient way to get to orbit, but not everybody is after equatorial orbits or geostationary orbits.

Lot of sats are for example spying sats, and these can use polar orbits (as the earth rotates under the sat, sat will at some point map the whole earth), or more fancy orbits that you can read about in this guide here: http://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm#types