New apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace has been stalled by Microsoft as the company battles with a bug that is stopping users from downloading or updating apps.

Microsoft officials said that an issue regarding the digital certificates used to sign the apps has barred some phones from installing some apps for the past week. An investigation carried out by Microsoft exposed that only those phones that are upgraded to Windows Phone 7.5 are affected and those phones bought along with Windows Phone 7.5 preinstalled are not affected.

Microsoft hopes to fix this issue soon, but for the meantime it has stopped the publication of apps. Sources have confirmed that only a small fraction of (aournd100,000) apps in the marketplace are affected. The most popular apps affected are The New York Times, WhatsApp, and Translator from Bing, all of which received updates recently.

Microsoft officials are raising concerns against uninstalling apps since the apps will have to be downloaded again, and this uninstalling process could lead to a loss of data that has been saved. An answers forum has been created by Microsoft where customer can post questions and queries. They are also publishing a blog post to get the customers acquainted with the company’s’ short-term app publishing and certification plans.