Miners have dutifully generated just under half of the total Bitcoins that will ever be mined. But the mining industry is about to be thrown into turmoil due to two major changes expected to hit, entirely coincidentally, around the same time. One is the introduction of application-specific integrated circuits, or "ASICs," designed specifically to mine Bitcoins up to 1,000 times faster than current technology. The other is a deadline hard-coded into the Bitcoin software. When the total number of Bitcoins reaches 10.5 million in about one week, the block reward will suddenly be cut in half — a protection built into the currency in order to prevent inflation.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/16/3649784/bitcoin-mining-asics-block-reward-change
