Intel says it's regaining market share

Barrett also told Reuters in an interview that the world's largest chip company is fairly insulated against the U.S. economic slowdown, as most of its business is overseas.

"I think we're in a very strong competitive position vis-a-vis AMD," Barrett said.

"We've given guidance on our performance, and it looks pretty good," he said, declining to comment further on the company's outlook or on current demand.

Intel earlier this month boosted its revenue to between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion for its current quarter, which is completed around the end of September. That is compared with an earlier target range of $9 billion to $9.6 billion, and with $8.74 billion in the year-ago period.

Barrett said his company has been regaining market share from AMD with new products. Intel has also fought market share losses to AMD with price cuts to older products.

Intel stumbled in 2005, but it started introducing chips with new designs in the middle of last year that have helped the company regain market share against its smaller rival.

Earlier this month, AMD introduced a line of chips code-named Barcelona that have four cores, the main computing engines in computers, to compete with quad-core processors from Intel.

When asked whether he had concerns about a U.S. economic slowdown, Barrett said most of Intel's business is abroad.

"The bulk of our business is outside the United States...The growth of our business is predominantly in emerging markets," he said.

"If there (were) a worldwide slowdown, that would be a concern to us," Barrett said. "But most of the dialogue has been on the U.S."

Intel's shares, which have risen about 10 percent in the last three months, compared with a 3 percent decline in AMD's share price, fell 0.46 percent to $25.79 on Thursday.