There is a high correlation between the price of Bitcoin's and increases in difficulty levels. As the Bitcoin price increases so does it drive resources into play to be used for mining Bitcoins.
Apart from the specifics of the sale of ASIC chips, estimates of future difficulty generally show increasing difficulty levels because of the expectation that new technology will bring about faster and less power hungry methods to mine for Bitcoin's. As long as the Bitcoin price holds up, we should expect general technology driven increasing levels of difficulty.
The increase in difficulty may continue as before until end July or later, when we may see steeper levels followed by stabilization to more standard increases thereafter.
