Security guards brawl over world's biggest Apple Store

Security guards from rival shopping malls in the eastern Chinese city of Dalian have been caught on camera brawling after one group took offence to a wall of giant Apple billboards hastily erected to promote the arrival of a new fruity store in the city.

The new shop is reportedly set to be the largest Apple Store in the world when it arrives in the impressive glass-fronted Parkland Mall later this year and in order to whet the appetite of eager fanbois, large advertising signs were erected to create a Great Wall of Apple effect around the front of the mall.

However, no sooner had they gone up than rivals from Dalian Department Store were given the order to destroy, as these hilarious videos on MIC Gadget show.

On the first, a relaxing al fresco coffee at Starbucks is rudely interrupted by the sound of screeching metal and grown men shouting insults at each other, while the second offers a more up close and personal view of the guards as they grapple with their fruity nemesis.

A security camera gives an even better perspective, showing that the Great Wall of Apple sadly lasted only a matter of minutes before being unceremoniously toppled.

Apparently Apple officials have now been called in to sort things out – let’s hope that works out for them or there could be more than eggs pelted at the store on opening.

The unseemly scuffle would seem to indicate the increasingly fierce competition among retailers in the People’s Republic for the hearts, minds and wallets of the country’s growing middle class.

Being faced with Apple as a secret weapon is obviously too much for some retail owners to bear. ®