From my experience, those aren't users determined to use outdated smartphones.
These are the super shady cheapo TV boxes that are essentially an underpowered SoC + Android 4.4 + a launcher. Or many Chinese handheld gaming devices.
Users probably do not stick around with 4.4 given how many important apps would not work.
As far as I know it's also used on embedded devices like barcode scanners at Tesco. Those either run Windows or Android. Ancient versions in both cases. Unfortunately it seems the model number disappeared from my search history so I don't know which versions for sure. I think it's either Android 4.4 or Windows CE.
But in those cases the Google Play services probably don't matter.