I suspect the Sapphire will be developed "in-house" (and thoroughly tested before release).
Why on earth would Lenz allow Hornby to rebadge their top of the line decoder and sell it for less than Lenz's own price for the Gold? Whatever Lenz stand for in DCC , it isn't discount prices. Anyway Lenz have ties to Roco and Bachmann
Digitrax are tied up with ZTC (and Gaugemaster????) . ESU are taken by Bachmann. That leaves TCS (who don't do Back EMF decoders and whose decoders may have issues with the Select) , NCE , and now I'm struggling
And anyway I'm still doubtful that any of the existing players in DCC have any interest in seeing a mass market company like Hornby selling anything other than severely crippled and limited DCC equipment
Hornby isn't big by the standards of Ford, Microsoft or Vodaphone but its very big compared to the likes of Lenz, ESU or NCE, and the little fish don't want to see the pike get into their pond
Thew 2 parts of Hornby's announcement seem to go together: the current Hornby decoder isn't sufficent to be accepted by existing DCC users, so they'll keep the DCC Ready option on all locos for another year or two till the Sapphire is ready. DCC Fitted locos will use the decoder they've actually got pro tem