Well, the SegWit1x has been already introduced and it helped with lowering the fees but it is not our fault that most of the community haven't switched to SegWit addresses.
It is in large part due to Core not yet being able to send Segwit transactions. Core still makes a large part of the network and most large services use it, accounting for a big proportion of the traffic.
The latest version of Electrum supports SegWit but (un)fortunately, it generates new type of SegWit addresses which as far as I know, are not compatible with legacy addresses (correct me if I'm wrong). Also, many exchanges don't use SegWit addresses for deposit and withdrawals so you should blame them.
The addresses are compatible in terms of you can send transactions to/from either. The problem is that other wallets have yet to catch up so you can only send to them from another Electrum wallet.
What has happened here is that the implementation other wallets use encapsulates Segwit and was only ever meant as a transition step. Electrum has gone straight to using native Segwit, everyone else will catch up. Core has promised it in the next major release.