LG is taking a beating in the smartphone market today. The company has been forced to cut its targets for sales of smartphones and regular phones for the quarter significantly in the face of slowing sales. LG is the third largest phone maker globally in terms of revenue behind Samsung and Nokia.

To make the slows sales even more difficult on shareholders and analysts, LG is unable to give any indication of when it will be able to turn its phone business around after four consecutive quarters of losses. LG is also falling behind rivals like Samsung and Nokia in its ability to roll out new and competitive models.

LG handset division head Park Jong-seok said, "Our overall performance is gradually improving ... but it's difficult to give a precise prediction when our business will turn around due to a fast changing external market environment."

LG made significant cuts in its estimates for 2011 smartphone sales reducing the 30 million it originally predicted down to 26 million handsets. Its overall handset sales forecast was chopped from 150 million to 114 million for the year. In the first half of the year, LG was able to move 50 million phones with 10 million of that number being smartphones.

LG isn't alone in struggling with sales; Nokia is also having a very hard time in the market today. Nokia recently cut its prices for smartphones in Europe to try to improve sales and the company is banking on its deal with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7 smartphones to pull its sagging smartphone business out of the red.

Analysts are expecting LG to report another loss from handset sales in the quarter than ended in June. This is expected because LG was unable to make handsets that challenged Samsung and Apple devices on the market. LG has had some popular models though like the Optimus 2X and the Optimus Black.

Analysts are predicting that LG will report losses for Q2 in the area of 70-90 billion won. The loss in the same quarter of 2010 was $112.5 million.