A Qualcomm roadmap put online by a Chinese analyst shows an unannounced soc. This soc is a Snapdragon 200, the series for devices with prices that are usually below 120 euros. The upcoming mobile processor will support 4g.
This means that the cheapest prepaid smartphones, with prices often well below 100 euros, can support 4g from next year. At the moment, 4G smartphones often cost more than 150 euros, although Vodafone already has a device with 4G in its range for 120 euros.
The Snapdragon 200 with 4G should be released in the spring of 2015, which presumably means that the first smartphones with this processor will be available in the summer or autumn of next year. After this step, all Qualcomm mobile processors support 4g: the Snapdragon 800, 600 and 400 lines already had that support.
The roadmap was put online by a Chinese analyst on his Weibo account. The roadmap shows that the release of the upcoming Snapdragon 410, 610 and 615 is still on schedule; those socs are all coming out in the next few months. The Snapdragon 810 will go to manufacturers at the end of this year, presumably in time to arrive in the successors of the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8).