Depending how you look at it, Intel’s Mobility Group is either flourishing or slumping. The business unit, which sells chips for notebooks and netbooks, posted a 27 percent drop in its third-quarter net income compared to last year. Sales also fell, dropping 11.7 percent to $4 billion compared to last year.

Compared to last quarter, however, the figures look much nicer. Intel’s mobility segment rose 19 percent sequentially on improved sales of its chipsets.

In addition to the earnings announcement, Intel gave some more detail into the success of its netbook processor, the Atom. According to a transcript of the companies’ earnings call from Seeking Alpha, processors for notebooks continue to outpace sales of netbook processors.

“Our mobile business had a particularly strong quarter – in fact, we saw the sequential unit growth rate of notebook processors and chipsets actually exceed the growth rate of Atom processors and chipsets,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini in a conference call with analysts. “…Atom and netbooks are important growth drivers for us, our traditional notebook business remains one of the primary drivers of revenue growth and we expect that to continue in the future.”

Intel CFO Stacy Smith said sales of Atom microprocessors and associated chipsets grew to $450 million in the third quarter and $1 billion year-to-date.