We reported this week that Microsoft had put a temporary hold on publishing new applications and application updates. This was due to a certificate issue which prevented installation of a limited number of applications on first generation devices that had upgraded to Windows Phone 7.5.

Fortunately, Microsoft is now rolling out a fix during the next two days to rectify this problem.

Most applications, and newer devices like the Lumia 900, were not affected by this issue. As we said in our previous report:

The number of apps affected by the certificate issue is, according to Microsoft, "only a small percentage of the 100,000-plus apps in the Marketplace", with the impacted apps being those that have been added or updated recently. A number of high profile apps do fall into this category, including the New York Times, WhatsApp, and Translator from Bing.

Microsoft updated its original blog post on the matter today with the following statement:

UPDATE (16 AUG): We fixed the digital certificate problem and last evening resumed publishing new apps and updates. It will take a day or two for the repair to fully deploy and newly-published apps to begin appearing in Marketplace again.  If you experienced errors, I want to emphasize that you don’t need to do anything to start downloading new apps or updates once the repair has finished rolling out.

If you’ve tried to download or update an app this week and keep getting an error message, I want to briefly explain why and what we’re doing about it.

For the next 48 hours, we advise Windows Phone users to stick to the advice we gave in our original report:

Microsoft recommends that users affected by the problem, which manifests as an error message when installing or updating an app, wait for Microsoft to fix the problem. Users should avoid uninstalling apps because they may be unable to download them again until the issue is resolved.