Speaking with financial analysts in Redmond this morning, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer offered his take on the current competitive landscape for Windows, discussing the operating system's position against Apple, Linux and Google's Chrome and Android operating systems. Here's an audio excerpt, and see below for written excerpts.

"We've been competing with Linux for a number of years," Ballmer said. "I want to describe our value proposition. We are a high-volume player. We don't not, like Apple, believe in low-volume, very high prices. Apple's a great company does a fine job, but their model says high margin, high quality, high price, that's kinda how they come to market."

"We say we want BIG market share, but with big market share you take the lower price. Well, along comes Linux, and they say, we have no price, which of course, we know for IP and other reasons, of course they have a price. But they say we have no price. The problem you have with these so-called free alternatives is there's also not the incentive to a lot of the hard work to build out the ecosystem to support the hardware vendors that is required.

"So a model like ours, which is high volume and high value but low priced but not free. You could say are you guys in the middle ground or are you where you want to be? And I say we're exactly where we want to be."

Stay tuned for more throughout the day from Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond.