Swedish vendor Ericsson’s other joint venture, chip firm ST-Ericsson, continues to drag on the company’s earnings but, like Sony-Ericsson’s losses, at least they’re moving in the right direction.

On Tuesday, ST-Ericsson said net loss for the third quarter of 2009 shrank to $112m, compared to a loss of $213m in the previous quarter. Net sales were up to $728m, compared to $666m in the second quarter of 2009, but down from $1bn in the third quarter of 2008.

As handset and component vendors look to different form factors to build up their product lines, ST-Ericsson scored a good deal in September that will see Dell use its chips in its netbooks. As part of the agreement, Dell and ST-Ericsson will extend their cooperation to other devices based on the TD-SCDMA platform solutions from ST-Ericsson, which may well include mobile handsets as well as netbooks.

The 50/50 joint venture between Ericsson and STMicroelectronics started operations on February 2 2009. It has been acknowledged by analysts as the biggest consolidation in the chipset market so far, the 50/50 joint venture claims to have the industry’s strongest product offering in semiconductors, supplying components to Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Sharp.