The original idea - and the reason Apportable got funded - was based on compiling a full iOS app to Android, with the press of a button. This worked very well in the beginning.
The main problem was, that with each iOS update, it proved extremely difficult to emulate the changes to the core OS. Especially GCD seemed to be a problem. Around the time Swift was released, Apportable felt they could not longer do this, despite it being their core idea, and the reason they got funded. Probably because the changes to iOS were significant to support Swift. So they dropped the idea, and in stead focused on an editor version, which dramatically would lower the requirements for the cross platform core.
Why they never made any official comments on anything, is anybody guess.