I can't imagine any cheap SoC for smartphones without H.264 HW decoder because playing video is essential and it can record video. Possibly exists for low-feature phones without camera but it's not for web browsing.

The licenses for codecs sometimes cut into the thin margins on budget phones. A large amount of people outside of the US and EU are stuck on low-end phones, and I'm pretty sure many of the government subsidized phones in the US are in the same boat.