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Yes, because how many e-readers where there in the US? Sony, which was expensive and unknown by much of the population, Nook which was new and whose bookstore wasn't as good as Amazons, and Amazon.
Gee, I can see how evil Amazon is here. They built a quality reader that was priced less than the Sony and had a better bookstore than the Sony. Amazon had the audacity to build, market, and sell an e-reader a few (I think three) years ahead of Barnes and Noble. When Barnes and Noble entered the market it did a poor job marketing, I remember the threads, and their bookstore was no where near Amazon's. Apple will still saying that no one read books so there was no point in making an e-reader or an e-bookstore.
All of this is Amazon's fault of course. Amazon should have marked up the original $400 Kindle to match Sony and never lowered the price. Or they could have waited for Sony to lower the price and matched that. Amazon should have a built a crappy bookstore that no one wanted to use because there was no selection and navigation was poor. Amazon should have developed the Nook for Barnes and Noble so that the Nook could be released at the same time as the Kindle. Amazon should have waited for Steve Jobs to realize that the people who do read, read a lot and buy a lot of books so it is a lucrative market.
Now, if Amazon had followed the above path, Amazon would not have been the dominant player in the market. E-readers would be way expensive, bookstores would uniformily suck, and there would be a bunch of equals in the market.
Silly Amazon for doing things differently and entering a market that had a ton of potential and quickly building a strong position in that market.
After all, we are all better off paying more for our books today than we were three years ago. I like shelling out more money for reading. Apple is 100% right, collusion is ok when it is used to make up a competitive gap caused by other companies not realizing that there was a market to exploit and taking their sweet time in entering the market.
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