With Microsoft's Surface Pro 8 just out on the market, a fierce and strong tablet- PC that aims to take on Apple's iPad, the race between some of the big players in the market enters another new chapter. With more choice now than ever, the question that people always ask themselves when new hardware and software comes on the market is "will I be using this in X amount of years? Will anyone be talking about it let alone remember it?" Microsoft's latest addition to the ever- increasing market of tablet-PC devices and Ultrabook devices is a win for you and me in the sense that there is now more diversity, now, on the market than there ever has been for tablet devices.

More than anything, however, Microsoft's recent tablet- PC is a reminder of how much Microsoft allowed Apple to dominate the market in recent years. True: the world still operates and relies heavily on Microsoft products, most notably Microsoft Office, but the tech giant lost out to Apple in recent years in terms of style, creativity and innovation. Apple made giant leaps in recent years with iPods, the iPhone, the iPad and OS X Mountain Lion, its operating system for Mac computers, to the point where its competitors were struggling to keep up. Microsoft also lost ground to Google, whose Chrome web browser, along with Mozilla's Firefox, overtook the slow, unreliable Internet Explorer 10, which has been hugely improved on Surface Pro.

That said, Google also fell asleep at the wheel when it came to social media, particular the rise of Facebook and Twitter. Google+, Google's social media application, hasn't made the leaps and bounds that many expected and it hasn't had the same brand strength and impact as Facebook and Twitter. In fact, I can't say that I know people who actively use Goolge+ nor do I know of businesses who use Google+ to market their business as they do with Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook, however, have made their own mistakes. Perhaps the leading social media platform of them all, Facebook has recently, albeit slowly, swallowed its pride and followed Twitter, Tumblr and instagram by featuring hashtags as way of targeting users with more personalized adverts for events and products.

It's hard to know what's next on the horizon for any of these players and this time next year, they could be either unrecognizable from each other, leading the way for new, younger players to enter into the market with fresh ideas. Whatever happens, the tech game remains one of the most exciting chess matches in business.

Word by Philip Cummins