Acer said the Chongqing base is scheduled to start operations in January of next year at the earliest.

The PC vendor announced earlier that it will invest up to 150 million dollars in the southwestern Chinese city and hoped Taiwanese component suppliers would move to Chongqing to create a manufacturing cluster.

Acer, which currently maintains an operating hub in Shanghai, is joining other local high tech companies in developing a presence in China's inland market.

Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest notebook computer ODM service provider, and Hon Hai Group, the largest contract electronics maker in the world, have already set up operating bases in Chongqing.

At present, Acer ranks as the second largest PC and notebook computer vendor behind Hewlett-Packard.

Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci sees China as still "having huge potential." He said the company hopes to become the second-largest player in the mainland's PC market in the near future, following Lenovo. He predicts China will surpass the United States to become the world's biggest computer market within three years.

Antonio Wang, research manager at IDC China said it will be "very hard" for Acer to outperform Lenovo and Dell in the short term, but he noted that the company has great potential since its deal with Founder, which helped to boost Acer's market share to about 10 percent in the mainland market.

The Taiwan-based company expects its sales in China will reach 2.5 billion U.S. dollars by 2011 through its cooperation with Founder, compared with 843 U.S. dollars million in 2009.