South Korea’s LG Electronics sunk to a KRW414 billion (US$367 million) net loss in the third quarter, due partly to weak sales at its mobile devices unit.

The loss compared to a KRW7.6 billion profit a year ago and was worse than the expected KRW56.1 billion loss forecast by analysts in a Bloomberg poll. Overall sales fell 4 percent to KRW12.90 trillion.

The mobile unit recorded a loss of KRW138.8 billion with a KRW139.9 billion loss from handset sales. While that was the better than the KRW302.9 billion loss a year ago, it was worse than the KRW90.5 billion loss expected by analysts. Sales at the division fell 8.5 percent to KRW2.8 trillion.

While the firm is the world’s third-largest handset vendor overall – behind Nokia and Samsung – it is struggling in the smartphone space.

“It’s been almost a year since their mass-market [smartphone] model Optimus One came out, and its life cycle is about to close without a follow-up model,” Park Seong Min, a Seoul-based analyst at Kyobo Securities, told Bloomberg. “That probably led to a fall in smartphone shipments.”

LG says it is on track to ship about 23.8 million smartphones this year, compared with 6.2 million in 2010, but it has recently lowered its smartphone sales target by 20 percent, according to Bloomberg. LG sold 21.1 million handsets in total in Q3, down from 24.8 million units in the previous quarter.