Unfortunately, contacts has stopped Galaxy note 1 stock firmware I'm running stock android version - 4.0.4 with baseband N7000DDLR1.
Received a minor update today in India(14.5MB) which said a performance update. 

Everything worked fine after the update. However, my contacts and phone applications have stopped working. When I tried opening any of these apps I get "Unfortunately, contacts has stopped".

I have cleared the cache/data of contacts, contacts storage, phone. I even did a factory reset twice; removed the memory card and tried the same. Problem persists.

PS. I have never rooted / installed custom firmware.
Kindly help.
This is a firmware issue, and needs to be addressed by the manufacturer.

If you have done a factory reset, then you should contact the manufacturer and tell them that after the latest upgrade, the contact and phone app no longer work.

They should release a new upgrade to fix this issue.