On the contrary I think mining operations will be dying down by end of Year. The only ones standing will probably be the ones run by the asic chip manufacturers themselves. Because there will come a time soon where they cant sell below their cost and that is when difficulty is so high buyers dont want to pay the high prices for the machines that dont roi and are better off buying the coins.
I'm with you on the timeframe...before the 'blinking' begins, i just don't see it dying down, but rather peaking, and then sloshing between the balance of the cost to run and profits as the fiat value of BTC bounces around, the type of balance that can only be maintained by large mining operations who have the least amount of overheads - which as we assume, is the asic manufacturers themselves, but also any operation that has managed to get bankrolled rather than the mine and build method. But as in anything, its just a guess.
I see BFL bankrupt soon, Cointerra is late to the game, as is Bitmine, Black Arrow. Spondoolies is good tech but too expensive. KNC will go private.
BFL will probably just get rebranded under another name, and shift their focus like most ASIC miner manufacturers to cloud hosting, hash reselling if they haven't already done so already.