Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, the world’s largest notebook computer original design manufacturer (ODM), said it plans to build a plant in Chongqing. In doing so it will join other IT companies that have decided to locate in the city, including Hewlett Packard, Foxconn, CISCO and Inventec. The plant will be Quanta’s third manufacturing facility on the mainland.

According to Huang Qifan, acting mayor of Chongqing, Quanta’s investment will help Chongqing achieve a notebook computer manufacturing cluster and will greatly advance the development of the IT sector in western China. The municipal government hopes to increase notebook computer production capacity to 80m units a year by 2015. This would make Chongqing one of the largest notebook manufacturing bases in the world. By then, computers will replace automobiles as the city’s pillar industry.

Founded in 1988, Quanta Computers produces notebook computers for the likes of Sony, Toshiba and HP. For its part, HP’s Chongqing factory is due to open later this month. Both HP and Taiwan-based Foxconn signed contracts with Chongqing in August to establish PC manufacturing plants in the city. Taiwan-based Inventec, the world’s fourth-largest ODM notebook maker, signed a contract with Chongqing in late December to set up a manufacturing base in the city.