Corning Inc., makers of Gorilla Glass used in many of today’s smartphones, has revealed that it is working on a new material that it claims will be as break-resistant as Gorilla Glass, while also being as scratch-resistant as sapphire.

Dubbed “Project Phire” the project was announced at an investors meeting by James Clappin, president of Corning Glass Technologies.

“We told you last year that sapphire was great for scratch performance but didn’t fare well when dropped,” Clappin said at the event. “So, we created a product that offers the same superior damage resistance and drop performance of Gorilla Glass 4 with scratch resistance that approaches sapphire.”

Launched in November last year, Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4 is up to two times tougher than competitive glasses and survives up to 80 percent of the time in damage events. It is however still prone to scratching.

Corning’s main streams of income are derived from glass it produces for TV displays and fiber-optics, but supplying Gorilla Glass to the smartphone industry has proved a key growth area for the company. Its Gorilla Glass is now used by a range of manufacturers and protects about 3 billion mobile devices, most notably Apple Inc.’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s Galaxy Note Edge and Galaxy Note 4.

Last year Corning’s revenue from Gorilla Glass came under threat when Apple invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a producer of synthetic sapphire, GT Advanced Technologies. Apple already uses sapphire to protect the camera lens and TouchID on its iPhone and was pushing to use the material for the entire iPhone screen. GT Advanced later filed for bankruptcy and severed ties with Apple, giving Corning a reprieve.

This close call led to Project Phire –an effort to combine the damage-resistant qualities of Gorilla Glass with the scratch-resistant qualities of sapphire.

If this new material performs as well as Corning says, it could give the company a significant edge over any future competitors in the mobile display-cover market. It may also lead to a bigger share of the smartwatch market where Gorilla Glass is already used by Samsung and in the Motorola Moto 360. It would likely also be the supplier of choice for Apple since the company intended to use sapphire for some models of its upcoming Apple Watch.

Corning plans to start selling the new material later this year.

Image via Corning