A matter of hours after we reported on suggestions many Windows Phone developers had been without up to date app download statistics for over a month, Microsoft has claimed its identified the cause of the problem.

The firm has updated its post on its Dev Center forums, claiming that the outage was tripped by the deployment of a "scheduled Dev Center update" that "inadvertently disrupted Dev Center reporting."

Devil is in the dates

"We have identified the root cause of the reporting outage and are deploying a fix," details Microsoft in the post.

"We recognise the importance of app performance data and will continue investing to improve your Dev Center experience."

However, the dates given by Microsoft don't appear to tally with its own previous assessment of the situation. Microsoft claims the Dev Center update that caused the problems was actioned on 17 July.

Confusingly, that's more than a month after the original post Microsoft published on 7 June first alerting developers to potential problems with Dev Center.

Indeed, one developer in reply claims to be suffering issues with reporting "1-2 times per month for more than six months."

We've contacted Microsoft for further clarification.