The rumor was that Apple was strongly considering Sapphire glass for the 6 and 6+, but discovered that while it has better scratch resistance than the older Gorilla Glass, it has worse shatter resistance, and more people were having trouble with shattered screens than scratched ones already. As someone who had a 4s in his pocket for years with keys, change, and no case I have to say that the scratch resistance of the old glass is remarkable. The glass still looks brand new, although the plastic bevel around the edge looks like hell.
I can definitely see a company getting in financial trouble if it was geared up to manufacture 10 million pieces of glass and had the order suddenly cancelled. They had probably already bought hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and was getting it set up and ready to go when Apple called up to cancel the order.