"India is a potentially large market for us. We have access to an incredible talent pool of engineers who offer skills," he said, adding that in the US one could not train engineers as fast as one could in India.

"And it has a side benefit of incredibly lower costs. All of these factors were responsible for a large investment in India," Otellini told reporters in this technology hub of India where Intel has set up a facility employing more than 1,500 engineers to develop software and chips.

Otellini, who is also the chief operating officer of Intel Corp., said in the past 10 years his firm had begun earning more revenues offshore than in North America.

Last month the government of India's southern Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, approved an Intel plan to build the 41 million-dollar centre.

Intel, which designs chips in India for switches and routers used in directing Internet traffic, also plans to start design work for its Pentium and Xeon processors in the country.

Bangalore is home to more than 1,000 foreign and domestic information technology firms including Dell, Texas Instruments, Cisco, IBM and HP.

"The next big thing is wireless. It is the single biggest opportunity for the Indian software industry," Otellini said.

"It is a cheaper and faster way to bring broadband. And there will be an opportunity (in India) for a whole new class of applications to be written," he said.

Wi-Fi growth was unabated with more than 27,000 new access points deployed everyday worldwide. India so far has only 100.

Wi-Fi, which offers wireless Internet access, is the hottest trend in the technology sector, offering a ray of hope to the battered industry.

As millions of portable computers become equipped to go wireless, tens of thousands of access points, or "hot spots" are being set up in airports, hotels, cafes and other locations in the US market and around the world.

"I have not seen anything as interesting as wireless and Wi-Fi. It will redefine how we use computing," Otellini said.

He said to create a market in any country Intel needed a strong local presence.

"This is very useful. If one comes from outside to sell you are perceived as a foreigner. When you have 5,000 people working for us then you are perceived as an insider," he said.

He said the Asia-Pacific region had shown strong growth despite the technology downturn.

"It has shown stronger and consistent growth driven by an increase in consumption in China and due to increasing propensity to outsource more to China. We see that retaining for sometime," Otellini said.

SPACE.WIRE