IT contractors could be bought on board by companies looking to make their webpages suitable for multiple browsers, an expert has suggested.

John Dunn, associate editor at Techworld, has claimed that it is likely that future consumers will become accustomed to running different browsers at the same time.

He has suggested that the falling market share of internet explorer has resulted in Microsoft acknowledging that users will be changing their habits in the future.

"The browser's importance is in the way it pushes users to related technologies and in this respect Microsoft's problem is that some of these in its own stable are still quite weak," he explained.

Mr Dunn added that this is a key way in which Google is becoming increasingly dominant, with its search engine in the position of number one by a considerable distance.

The European Commission recently adopted an offer by Microsoft that will give consumers within Europe a wider choice of browsers.