For those who came in late, Apple copied Microsoft’s Surface after spending some time rubbishing the concept.

When the Surface was released, Jobs’ Mob CEO Tim Cook rubbished it saying that “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but you know those things are not going to be probably be pleasing to the user.

Now one of the few things that Apple can sell well at the moment is its Surface clone, the iPad Pro.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is finally pointing all this out with a large dose of irony.

"Three years ago, the two-in-one as a form factor was questioned. Does anybody need one? And now guess what, even our competition has decided that it's not a refrigerator and a toaster but it's actually a two-in-one," Nadella told the Australian Financial Times.

Nadella indicated once more that Microsoft is all but out of the smartphone business, choosing instead to focus on apps and tools like Microsoft Office and its Enterprise Mobility Management, which work across iPhone and Android as well as Macs and PCs.

"We will continue to be in the phone market not as defined by today's market leaders, but by what it is that we can uniquely do in what is the most ultimate mobile device," Nadella told the Australian Financial Times.

Microsoft will soon be releasing the new Surface Studio, which is supposed to be a unique hybridisation of the tablet and the PC. Nadella appears to think that Apple will have no choice but to copy it.