Netflix, Barnes & Noble Partner for Survival

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Netflix (NFLX) and Barnes & Noble (BKS) are joining forces, hoping that the two struggling companies are better than one.

Barnes & Noble on Monday unveiled its Nook tablet, a 7-inch device with 16 gigabytes of storage, for $249. Among the dozens of features offered on the device is access to entertainment, most notably Netflix.

During a press conference at Barnes & Noble's New York City flagship at Union Square, CEO William Lynch said the Nook tablet will have a deep integration with Netflix, which along with Hulu Plus will come pre-loaded.

Aside from the Netflix application, which marks the first time the video streaming service will be available on a Nook product, Barnes & Noble's tablet also will send push notifications on the home screen of Netflix recommendations.

Instead of creating its own media content, like Amazon(AMZN), Barnes & Noble is outsourcing digital content from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Pandora.

"We are not going to launch something if we can't add material value just to get in the market," Lynch said.

The partnership between Netflix and Barnes & Noble comes as both companies try to figure out how to survive in the digital space.

For Netflix, this has proven difficult in recent months. Following several strategic blunders, the company saw a bigger-than-expected churn in subscribers and also warned it may report a loss starting next year.

"We are thrilled to offer the Netflix service on the Barnes & Noble NOOK for the first time," Bill Holmes, Netflix vice president of business development, said in a statement. "We believe that many Netflix members are also NOOK users, and now they can use the device they embraced for reading to instantly watch movies and TV episodes streaming from Netflix."

Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said that right Netflix is looking to get to as many eyes as possible and on as many different devices as possible. The service is currently available on over 700 devices. The question is whether this be enough to turn around Netflix, which only a few months ago was the Golden Child of Wall Street.

-Reported by Jeanine Poggi in New York.

Follow TheStreet.com on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints