The holiday shopping season is rarely associated with disappointment - especially in the technology industry - but that's exactly what Barnes & Noble's Nook division delivered last month despite striking up a strategic partnership with Samsung over the summer.
The bookseller's anemic Nook division earned $56 million during the nine-week period ending this past Saturday. That includes all devices, accessories and content according to figures released by the company.
Overall, the division brought in 55.4 percent less than it did during the 2013 holiday shopping season. Broken down individually, device and accessory sales slid 67.9 percent to $28.5 million while content sales declined 25 percent year-over-year to $27.4 million.
The company's Nook division has been reeling for quite some time so it's likely that the holiday performance wasn't much of a surprise. In fact, Barnes & Noble announced this past June that they plan to split their retail and Nook businesses into two separate companies. That spinoff is expected to be complete by the end of August 2015.
Barnes & Noble isn't the only one coming up short thanks to the poor performance from its Nook division. In 2012, Microsoft invested $300 million in the Nook venture - only to sell back the 17.6 percent stake the Redmond-based company purchased a few years later for $62.7 million and 2.7 million Barnes & Noble shares.