I guess we'll see in the light of the DMA. Apple didn't allow EA to compete before, but who knows now.
But this seems to be missing the point. Epic Games wants to put their store on mobile, they had android on the roadmap for years. They very much want to compete.
First, thank you for posting this because this was my first clue that I mixed up EA’s thing with Epic’s thing. My bad.
Second, wanting to compete and competing aren’t the same activity. They are not presently a competitor to the iPhone’s App Store. They may become a competitor in the future, pending presumably at least some discussions between Apple, the EC and Epic, and possibly a legal fight, but calling them an app marketplace competitor in the present-tense is not accurate nor justifiable.
