Imagine a cellphone or tablet held either upwards (portrait) or sideways (landscape).
It's just a different default resolution and ratio. You can reset that later if you like, you are not bound to these values, they are just there for convenience. Like if you know you make a game like Tetris for mobile phones that is supposed to be played with the phone held upwards, then you would choose "portrait" and would not have to set the ratio yourself.