Despite their rivalry in streaming movies, Amazon and Netflix have been working behind the scenes since before the Kindle Fire’s public unveiling to make sure the Netflix service will be available on the Amazon tablet.

But Amazon — which hopes to recoup its loss on the Kindle Fire hardware in part by getting movie-watchers to pay for Amazon Prime subscriptions — hasn’t exactly been shouting about the upcoming availability of Netflix on the device.

Until this morning, when the Seattle company announced the lineup of launch apps for Kindle Fire, with Netflix near the top of the list.

“We’re excited to team up with Amazon to give what we think will be a huge community of Kindle Fire owners the opportunity experience all that Netflix has to offer,” says Bill Holmes, Netflix VP of business development, in the Amazon news release. “We’re certain that our members will have a great viewing experience on Kindle Fire.”

The announcement comes two days after another Amazon competitor, Barnes & Noble, announced a new Nook Tablet with features including Netflix movies, in addition to Hulu Plus, which the Kindle Fire isn’t expected to have, at least not at launch.

Amazon says several thousand apps will be available for Kindle Fire when it’s released next week — pointing particular to “Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio.”

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