The point is that the intuitive wisdom that free market competition lowers prices of goods is not now, nor has it ever been the truism that it's postured as, because the businesses within that market have a huge selection of tools and strategies at their disposal to avoid direct competition.

And this makes sense. Why in the world would you subject your business to the unmediated competition of a free market? Yeah, it's totally possible for you to create a product so innately better that you own the market by virtue of that, but that's like... hard. It's way easier to create brand-lock-in to incentivize your existing customers to stay in your "ecosystem," or to create an innovative unique feature and patent it so your competition can't use it, or use snobby/elitist marketing to make your product more enticing to people who seek status, or shit, go the other way, make it humble and down to earth, and appeal to a sense of "genuineness," or tie yourself to patriotism and put flags all over your product, whatever it might be. There's tons of ways you can make people want your thing that have fuck-all to do with the thing.

I think this is a serious fault in how pro-free-market people tend to think, which is this constant positioning of people as rational actors who will choose the best product for their needs, and it's utter nonsense. People buy stuff for stupid reasons constantly.