Intel Corp, the $26.8-billion chipmaker, is betting on India to emerge as one of the most promising markets outside North America and Europe for its rapid growth in business and software development.

Intel president and chief operating officer Paul Otellini told the media in Bangalore on Tuesday that the global firm plans to make its Indian subsidiary a major hub in the Asia-Pacific region on account of the market potential and incredible talent pool at incrementally lower costs for chip designing and product development.

"Intel ranks India along with China, Russia, Ireland, and east Europe as growth markets for our products and solutions. We will continue to invest resources here to be closer to our customers and capitalise on the software skills to develop new products cost-effectively," Otellini stated.

With China and Taiwan emerging as global manufacturing bases for hardware products, Intel intends to leverage the strengths in other countries for ramping up its operations and expanding its presence.

"While India will be a major hub for our software development, we will carry out algorithm research in Russia, production expansion in Ireland and market development in east European countries," Otellini declared.

In view of the convergence of computing and wireless technologies, Intel sees huge growth opportunities in the developing countries where upgrading of desktops and servers will drive its business exponentially.

Wireless technologies and Internet access through mobile devices, PDAs and Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) will bring about a revolution in the way people and businesses operate and function, as they will bring down communications costs drastically and give network access through broadband anywhere, anytime.

"Wi-Fi allows enterprises as well as customers to surf the Internet at high speed without messy wires, by linking computer and mobile devices via radio signals to any nearby base stations, called hot spots," Otellini claimed.

Adapting itself to wireless applications by upgrading its Intel architecture, the company plans to roll out more products for enterprise computing.

"The potential is huge as a whopping 500 million PCs worldwide are still operating below 700Mhz speed. The need to upgrade them in several countries will ensure that desktops will continue to dominate the market in volume terms," Otellini asserted.