SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea's SK Hynix posted a sharply narrower loss than in the previous quarter, as strong demand for high-end chips used in artificial intelligence helped ease the impact of a prolonged slowdown in demand for commodity chips used in smartphones and computers.

The world's second-biggest memory chipmaker said on Thursday it swung to a 1.8 trillion won ($1.33 billion) third-quarter operating loss from a profit of 1.7 trillion won a year earlier.

It was its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, but improved from a trough of a 3.4 trillion won loss in the first quarter and a 2.9 trillion won loss in the second quarter.

The result was better than expectations of a 1.7 trillion won operating loss, according to 20 analysts' views compiled by LSEG SmartEstimate, weighted toward analysts who are more consistently accurate.

Revenue fell 18% year-on-year to 9.1 trillion won.

($1 = 1,351.6200 won)

(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Jamie Freed)