Microsoft has resumed publishing apps on its Windows Phone Marketplace after fixing a bug related to digital certificates, which prevented some apps from installing on phones. The company stopped publishing apps on Tuesday, Aug. 14, after discovering the glitch. According to Microsoft, a changeover in the back-end infrastructure for the app store was behind the issue. On Thursday, Aug. 16, Marketplace chief Todd Brix said the "hiccup" has been addressed.

"We fixed the digital certificate problem and last evening resumed publishing new apps and updates," Brix wrote in a blog post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog. "It will take a day or two for the repair to fully deploy and newly-published apps to begin appearing in the marketplace again."

According to Microsoft, the issue which affected a "small percentage of the 100,000-plus apps" on the store stopped handsets from installing apps or updates published in the last week. While it affected phones upgraded to Windows Phone 7.5, handsets with the later operating system pre-installed were not affected.

Microsoft decided to stop accepting new mobile apps until the glitch was fixed. Fortunately for app developers, the issue only affected a small percentage of the more than 100,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace. "I think this was a hiccup that likely will not have enduring effects in the long run," Al Hilwa, IDC director of applications software development, told Sci-Tech Today on Friday. "The platform is in transition right now and the ecosystem is both excited and apprehensive."

"If your app was in the process of being published, you don't need to take any action," added Brix. "We have applied the fix and the app will continue through the certification and publishing workflow as normal," he reassured developers.

Microsoft launched the Windows Phone Dev Center earlier in August, providing a venue where developers can build, publish and manage apps for Windows Phone 7.5 and the upcoming Windows Phone 8. The software giant is preparing to release its updated mobile operating system and is looking for developer support to better compete with Google's Android, Apple's iOS, and even RIM's BlackBerry OS.