I'm Reiterating my Buy rating for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), first recommended on March 30, 2009 at a price of $14.72.

No longer a get-ahead-of-the-pack play, strictly speaking, Intel is now a run-with-the-pack play: the institutional investors have been adding to their INTC positions for months, and you should too, if you'd like a chance at out-sized gains.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) continues to beat up on beleaguered smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD), and the world's largest chip maker has now upped its outlook for the third quarter, as laptop computer sales increase and Intel takes back some market share it lost to AMD in 2006.

Intel's third quarter revenue outlook is $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion, up from its earlier projection of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion. Intel also stated that it expects gross margin to be about 52% in the quarter. With analysts already pegging Q3 sales at $9.33 billion, this increased outlook from the chip giant is great news for investors, although CEO Paul Otellini did not expand on the specifics around the increase other than to hint at increased forecasts of PC shipments for the quarter.

This makes sense, as Intel's rising market share will sail along with those increased shipments if in fact they materialize as forecast. But remember, the holiday shopping season is coming up, and the consumer segment is the hot one in PC sales right now, not the corporate segment. Come holiday shopping time, laptop shipments are set to blaze once again. Add in Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) growing Mac sales -- which now all ship with Intel chips -- and there you go.

After Intel gained about 6% of share from AMD in the first quarter of 2007, the company regained enough of the market to pin AMD with the lowest market share in more than a decade. Intel's Core Duo chips are increasingly shipping in mid-range and higher-end laptop systems, even with AMD's Turion dual-core chips in the same market segment and shipping with all major laptop brands. Come October 16, we'll see how Intel fared in the current quarter, but right now the chipmaker's return to former glory is definitely on track, much to the chagrin of AMD.

Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC) is being squeezed hard by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq:AMD) and the pressure isn't going to let up anytime soon.

Shares of the world's largest chipmaker tumbled in early trading because of concerns about the company's declining gross margins, which are expected to fall to 50 percent this year, missing analysts' forecasts, according to Bloomberg News.

``AMD is providing intense competition,'' said Michael Cuggino, chief executive officer of Permanent Portfolio Funds, which manages about $850 million, including Intel shares, in an interview with Bloomberg. ``The price war is minimizing the margin considerably.''

Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter were modest -- limbo contest at a wedding low -- and Intel managed to post results in that context that weren't awful. Profit plunged 39 percent and sales fell 5 percent to $9.7 billion. Excluding share-based compensation, Intel earnings $1.7 billion, or 30 cents, beating Wall Street expectations.

The smart, resourceful and good-looking readers of Blogging Stocks also saw this one coming. Of the 582 responses to our site's poll, 52 percent were expecting the Intel to beat expectations, 35 percent were expecting an in-line quarter, and 13 percent were expecting a miss.

Eric Buscemi sees a silver lining for Intel is the growing demand for notebooks and desktops and Microsoft Corp's (Nasdaq:MSFT) Vista operating system. Buscemi argues that the decline in Intel's shares represents a buying opportunity and I see his point.

Intel is the sort of stock where sentiment fluctuates wildly. Wall Street seems to think these sort of companies either are awesome or stink. Savvy investors know the truth lies somewhere in the middle.